


a hushed sound

by coalitiongirl



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, post 3b
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-13
Updated: 2014-08-03
Packaged: 2018-02-08 15:26:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 41,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1946307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Destiny.</i> That’s what the Dark One tells them, an odd strain on his face whenever he speaks to Regina. That’s what they’re facing here. An inevitable ending. Regina has orchestrated her death once, and she’ll do it again, because that’s the only way this story can end. No one can interfere, not even Marian herself, and only Regina can control whether or not that moment is the one that decides her fate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

When she’d been ten and a child in King Xavier III’s court, she’d heard whispers of his youngest brother, Prince Henry, who’d disgraced the family in some way that she hadn’t quite understood. Her mother had scowled and said it had been Xavier II’s fault, that they should cast blame where blame was due, but the other nobles had all murmured with displeasure when his name had come up- or that of his daughter, a princess no one had ever met.

 

Marian hadn’t been a royal, only a second cousin thrice removed from the king’s wife on her mother’s side, but she’d been a frequent visitor to the court, her mother a close friend of the king’s from childhood and her father a respected knight. She’d heard the whispers and seen the sneers when Prince Henry and his wife had come to the palace for the wedding of King Xavier’s eldest son, and it had been then that she’d first seen the princess Regina.

 

Regina had been fifteen and she’d walked with regal grace and disdain, staring down all the silent glares with her chin tipped up and her gait steady. Marian had been fascinated at her pride, at how she’d carried herself with no shame- same as her mother, though her father shuffled and stared down- and then Regina had caught her admiring gaze. She’d flushed darkly and Regina had rolled her eyes and offered her a grin in response, and she’d known at once that this girl had been only human, no witch or disgrace or danger to the throne.

 

* * *

 

The next time she sees Regina, she’s being dragged before her and Regina’s eyes sweep over her with no recognition of a week a decade and a half before. She’d been caught riding out of the kingdom that evening, hurrying back to her son and husband, and she’s silent and terrified when the queen casts her gaze over her. 

 

This isn’t the girl she’d met for a single week, dancing eyes and fierce protectiveness and an easy laugh, but she still sees Regina in the way she lifts her chin as she eyes her new prisoner. “Who are you protecting?” the queen barks out, and Marian knows that this is the Evil Queen now, not a cousin she’d barely known. The whispers and shame once directed at her have become terror and obeisance, and Marian would never be so foolish to trust her.

 

She thinks of her husband’s image etched onto wanted posters in the forest, right beside another enemy of the kingdom, and she quakes with fear at what might happen to Robin and Roland if she were to tell the truth. “Snow White,” she says instead, and she knows it’s the wrong answer the moment Regina’s eyes darken. 

 

* * *

 

And now here she is, in another land and another time, her baby son grown five years and her husband pushing open the door to the tavern- no, _diner_ \- they’d reunited in a week ago, and there she is again- not Princess Regina, not Queen Regina, but this new Regina, who watches her in silence and with pain that she doesn’t understand.

 

She’s sitting at the head of a table including- of all the unlikely companions- Snow White on one side, and the young boy Emma Swan had introduced to her as _their son_ on the other, picking at a salad and determinedly avoiding anyone’s gaze. Her chin is still up but when she does glance up, it’s only to speak to Snow or the boy or Snow’s husband, beside his wife, and she doesn’t acknowledge the last woman at the table. 

 

It wouldn’t be so noticeable if Emma hadn’t been intent on  _her_ , eyes weary and sad, and when she doesn’t get a response she looks down again. Emma is uncomfortable around Marian these days, on edge like she’d been after they’d broken out of the dungeons in the past. On edge like there’s something she’s afraid to tell Marian, and Marian doesn’t like it at all.

 

She says something else, a half-smile forcing its way onto her face, and Regina glowers and stabs into her lettuce until Emma’s face falls again. Marian’s eyes are on them, still drawn to understand this new Regina who’d apologized stiltedly to her that first night and told her she had nothing to fear while Robin kept his hand on hers in a vice grip and had been openmouthed and shaken by something he wouldn’t explain to Marian. _It's nothing worth worrying about anymore,_ he’d murmured, and cast one last glance behind them as they’d gone back to his new home in Storybrooke.

 

He presses a kiss to her temple as they sit down, Marian’s eyes still on the table across the room. Regina has caught sight of them and she’s sneaking glances at their table while Emma sneaks glances at her, and it’s suddenly too claustrophobic in the room with the weight of secrets she hasn’t been told and emotions she can’t understand.

 

She stands, frustrated, and says, “I’ll order for us. Robin, what do you–“ 

 

She stops, eyes wide as the fork Regina is stabbing into her salad flips out of her hand and straight toward Marian, metal tines pointed at her neck and she’s frozen in place, unable to dodge or duck the implement as it picks up speed and hurtles toward her. She struggles to raise her hand to catch it, to stop its movements, but she’s rooted in place by a force beyond her control.

 

And then the fork dissolves into purple rose petals, dropping to the floor in front of her, and Robin is gaping and Snow looks guilty and Regina lowers her hand from where she’d managed to transform the fork as her mouth tightens, looking just as stunned as the rest of them.

 

Emma hurries over to their table a moment later, practically wringing her hands in apology. “That was an accident. I’m so sorry.” 

 

“You didn’t do it,” Robin says coolly, and his arm is tense around her waist. “If the queen could refrain from attempting to kill my wife _again_ –“ 

 

Emma shakes her head, looking irritated. “You know she’s not that person anymore.” It sounds almost accusing to Marian’s ears, and she frowns between them. There is something she’s not being told, and she can feel it like a physical thing, permeating the room with distrust and regret and sorrow. “It was an honest mistake. You know Regina, she’s not going to kill someone with a _fork_. Maybe a full-sized dishwasher.”

 

She tries for a grin but instead a cold voice behind her says, “I can manage my own defense without you, Miss Swan. As I can everything else in my life.” It’s like ice, harsh and unyielding, and Emma slumps and stalks back to her parents, head down like a kicked puppy.

 

Regina nods to them both and then exits the diner, and Marian sees from the window the way she punches a hole into the gate outside the outdoor seating area. She repairs it with a wave of her hand and walks on.

 

No, Regina isn’t one to kill someone with a fork. 

 

* * *

 

A thought occurs to her later that evening, and she turns to Robin as they walk home and asks, “Do you?” 

 

“Hm?” He smiles down at her as he always does now, fondness with a tinge of wonder, and she’s frustrated and relieved by it at once. He’s different now, more patient, less of a risk-taker. A father. A leader. Not the young man she’d met in the woods, chasing villains and double-crossing lords with not a care in the world. And she feels as though she doesn’t know him anymore, that he isn’t quite the man she’d left behind, but he laughs off her concerns and reminds her that they’re together and it’s all that matters.

 

She doesn’t want to be a miracle, she wants to be a woman, a mother, to catch up with him when he’d grown up so quickly, and she doesn’t want to deny this gap in who they are as he does. She wants… (She’s afraid to want, to come up short when he finally faces who she is now, and she bites her tongue and struggles to be happy in a void.)

 

Instead she returns to her original query. “Know the Queen? As Emma had said.” 

 

She doesn’t know what she’s asking for except that she knows that Regina is a part of the story Robin won’t tell her, and she sees it in how he pales and murmurs, “She was an ally. I hadn’t known then what she’d done to you, or I’d have never- have never-“ He sighs, long and sorrowful, and the animosity from earlier had felt more forced than this long sigh wrought with emotion.

 

“You couldn’t have known,” she says soothingly, and it’s getting more and more difficult every day to remember the Evil Queen mocking her screams of terror when she sees the woman walking down the street, a hand tight in her son’s and her eyes sweeping over the passersby and then straight ahead, looking more like Princess Regina who’d dared the nobles’ shaming and refused to accept it. “I only asked because I knew her too,” she admits.

 

But Robin doesn’t understand, just tucks his chin over her hair, and his embrace is a little tighter now, a little more firm, and she doesn’t mind the change at all.

 

* * *

 

She seeks out Mulan, the woman who had joined the Merry Men in her absence. She’s different than Marian had been when she’d done the same, more skilled with a sword than a bow and slow to smile with those she distrusts.

 

Marian had been younger and brasher, riding bareback past the hooded man robber and daring him to follow her, laughing as they’d chased each other through the woods of Locksley and Nottingham. She’d been a noble dissatisfied with her own way of living, unimpressed with the opulence of the rich couple with the desolation of the poor, and she’d taken on Robin’s noble mission with gravity and a touch of teenaged defiance.

 

Mulan has the gravity and nobility and none of the defiance, but she does smile when she sees Marian now. _Robin has always spoken highly of you,_  she'd said when they’d first met, inclining her head. 

 

And that had been enough for them to reach camaraderie, and Marian ventures now, “Can you tell me about the Queen?” They’re walking down one of the main streets in Storybrooke’s marketplace. Mulan had offered to help her purchase a crossbow, a more effective sort of bow that’s now favored by the Merry Men, and she’s holding the box on her shoulder as she points out Storybrooke’s sights.

 

“The Queen. Regina?” Mulan asks, and there’s a guarded look in her eyes, same as Emma’s and Robin's.

 

“Yes. You must have spent some time with her in the past year. And I don’t…I don’t understand how she is so different now.” She doesn’t know if she trusts the change or if she’s seeing a long-gone princess where she no longer exists, and she stares at her bow and waits for Mulan to respond.

 

The other woman sighs. “I am not…I did not know her well. We stayed in her castle after those who were cursed returned, but she was rarely seen. Here I know she…” She hesitates. “She worked with the Merry Men to defeat Zelena,” she says finally. “I cannot say more, but I don’t believe she bears any malice toward you.”

 

“I see.” She _does_ see, but it’s in the hesitation in Mulan’s voice, the stiffness in her gait, and the way she can’t quite look at Marian when she’s lying.

 

Or at the very least, omitting the truth.

 

“I did know her mother, though,” Mulan says abruptly. “That was enough for me.”

 

“Enough for you to what?”

 

Mulan shrugs, the box on her shoulder shifting with the movement. “Understand, I suppose. How someone could be so corrupted.”

 

“I met her mother, too,” Marian says, and she doesn’t respond to Mulan’s curious gaze. She’d seen her only once when they’d returned from a ride that day, berating her daughter for their association.  _Filth_ , she’d called Marian, _common_ , and she’d swelled up with indignation but Regina had put a hand on her arm and apologized, so meek that Marian had been frightened at the change. She hadn’t come back to see Regina again before the wedding celebrations, and she’d only sought her out at the party itself. Regina had been approached by only few men in the room, her mother’s face growing darker and darker with each snub. Their eyes had caught once and Regina had looked away. “I don’t think it’s enough, though. To forgive her atrocities.” 

 

“No,” Mulan agrees. “Certainly not forgiveness.”

 

And when Regina looks at her, aloof and cool and hard, she seems to know better than to seek it.

 

* * *

 

Roland favors Mulan still, and he’s unsure around the woman sharing his house about whom he’s been told only stories. She swallows her pride and accepts it, doesn’t stare too long when Roland shuffles beside Mulan with his hands dangling at his side just as hers do and a toy light-sword- a _lightsaber_ , he corrects her when she asks about it, his tiny face screwing up with annoyance- proudly hanging from a leather holster Arthur a Bland had cut for him. 

 

But she offers him a stick of candy from one of the local shops and he takes it carefully, grave as though it’s a precious gem, and he says, “Thank you, Mama,” and walks between them after that.

 

A car roars past them on the street, and Marian flinches by instinct. Mulan snickers and Marian glares at her as she struggles unsuccessfully to school her face into something less amused. “Don’t tell me you were accustomed to those war machines when you first got here.” 

 

“Not quite,” Mulan admits. “The curse was sound but it must erode with each use. When we got here, we didn’t have predetermined roles in the town as they did with the first curse, but I had…awareness, I suppose. I knew how to drive a car and what a phone was and the story of my own fairytale, but I didn’t have a home here or false memories. It was…overwhelming.”

 

“Did you know?” Marian wonders at the dissatisfaction on Mulan’s face as she glances away from Marian at the street, at the discomfort she’s seen on the faces of many of the Merry Men when they speak about this world. “That the curse was coming?” 

 

Mulan shakes her head. “I would have fled it if I could. There are advantages to this realm, of course, but…”

 

“Everyone’s running from something among the Merry Men,” Marian recites, remembering the old song they’d had. Thieves and traitors and repented killers had found a new home with Robin, safe away in the woods with a new family and life. The Sheriff of Nottingham had unsuccessfully sought more than one ransom from their circle. “What were you running from?”

 

Mulan blushes and Marian’s eyes widen at the wistfulness on her face. “Was it love? Did you fall in love with of the Men? Who was it?” Roland giggles at her enthusiasm and she grins down at him, pleased. “You must tell me your love story, Mulan. Are there songs about it?” 

 

“I did fall in love,” Mulan allows. “The object of my affections…felt differently.” Marian’s mouth snaps closed and Mulan peers across the street again to a young couple, pushing along a baby carriage and speaking animatedly. “I had joined Robin with the hope that I might escape my feelings and move on, but Storybrooke is so small.” She sighs heavily.

 

She watches the couple, the girl suffused with happiness and the boy solicitous to her, and she murmurs, “Which was it? Him or her?” 

 

“It doesn’t matter anymore.” But the girl turns toward them and her face lights up as she spots Mulan, and Marian aches with the smile that Mulan returns to her, empty and pained. The girl frowns, looking devastated. Whatever had happened there does indeed matter to both of them, even if Mulan won’t acknowledge it, and Marian wonders at it.

 

“Do you think–“ Another car roars toward them, sleek and dark, but this one is swerving from side to side and jerking toward the sidewalk. “Mulan! Is that normal?” She tries to move aside to block Roland, to pull him away, but she’s rooted in place. “Mulan!”

 

The car twists across a lane of traffic and she sees the familiar face in the front window before it turns even further, twisting at an angle so sharp that it’s lifting from the ground on the other side, flipping over in the center of the street as pedestrians gape and Marian finds her feet finally working again. 

 

“Marian, don’t!” Mulan calls, but she’s already racing into the street, yanking at the handle beside the driver’s seat until the door opens, the window crashing into dozens of pieces of glass as she does. Regina is unconscious within, a slash of red on her face and her body still buckled into the vehicle, and she reaches to shake her shoulders tentatively.

 

Common sense tells her to stay away from the Queen but she can’t turn away like so many others are when they see who’s in the car, whispering among themselves but not daring to come any closer, and it’s only Mulan and the girl from across the street who join her at the wreck. Regina like this is no threat, only a victim, and the girl says quietly, “I called Emma. How do we get her out?”

 

Mulan casts an eye over the broken glass on the street and worries her lip. “No roll bar. The roof is caving in. It’d be better if she wakes up, but I don’t know what harm it might do to force it if she has a concussion.”

 

Regina groans, and Marian shakes her shoulders again. She doesn’t know much about this realm and concussions, but they’d never worried about them in her world until the danger had passed. There had been the odd Merry Man who’d never been the same after a fall from a horse or an impact from an axe, but safety had always been their priority. “Is there a physician here?” 

 

Regina twitches again and her eyes pop open. She looks dazed, uncertain, and she blinks at Marian’s face twice before she realizes where she is. “What is this? What have you done to me?” she demands, every bit the queen.

 

Marian opens her mouth to respond but then she’s nearly shoved aside, Emma Swan at the scene at last. “Regina! Regina!” She takes in the car, wide-eyed. “What did you do?” 

 

Regina waves her hand and a cloud of smoke envelops the car. It disappears and reappears again on the right side of the street, upright with the window repaired and rolled halfway down. “It's _fine_ , Miss Swan,” she snarls out. “Your services are no longer required here.” 

 

“Like hell they aren't,” Emma says, charging right back for the car. She reaches out to touch the blood on Regina’s face. “You’re hurt. You’re going to the hospital.” 

 

“It’s a scratch.” Regina is glaring past Emma now at Marian and Mulan and Mulan’s friend as though they’re the ones to blame. “Go back to your station. I’m sure Sparkles the Cat is mewling up a tree for you as we speak.”

 

“Regina–“ Emma’s hand is still on Regina’s face and Regina hasn’t pulled away, even if she’s directing that fury on her face at Emma through it. “Come on. You can’t keep getting hurt like this and doing nothing about it. I’m calling an ambulance.” Her voice is even, a note too drawn out to be anything but pleading, and she pauses and murmurs, “Henry would never forgive me if something happened to you.” 

 

“Henry would forgive _you_ anything,” Regina says, a touch of resentment in her voice, but then she snaps, “ _I’m_ driving,” and Emma’s in the passenger seat in an instant, the three of them in the center of the street forgotten as they drive off.

 

Roland clings to Marian's hand on the way home, and she considers the day a victory, odd near-car collision or not.

 

* * *

 

There’s a pond and a grassy area near the center of town that’s rather beautiful, calming in its simplicity in a world where she’s still adjusting, and she likes to walk along the water alone some afternoons, taking in the people around her and the intrusive sounds of mechanical chariots and beeping communication devices and letting it all wash over her. 

 

But today Emma is with her, breaking up the peace with questions about how she’s adjusting and deftly avoiding any of Marian’s own questions. If there’s one thing Emma appears to be skilled at, it’s dodging any reciprocal conversation in favor of firing new queries at Marian with every step.

 

She’s about to ask some pointed questions about the witch who’d cast the time travel spell when she pauses, startled to see Robin sitting on a bench ahead of them. He's speaking in low tones to a short brunette as he sits uncomfortably, and then the woman shifts and somehow Marian isn’t surprised at all when she recognizes Regina. Regina’s equally uncomfortable, arms wrapped around herself as she speaks, and Marian walks closer, listening to her halting words as Emma’s brow furrows.  _“I can’t erase the past–“_

 

“There are some things I wish I could,” Robin murmurs, and he’s angry and hurt and Regina shakes her head, her face unperturbed even as her hands tighten.

 

“You know who I was. I never pretended otherwise. I didn’t know…I never knew she was your wife. Does it matter anymore?” 

 

This feels private in a way that she can’t quite pin down, a conversation that shouldn’t include even its object. From _Robin_ Regina seeks the forgiveness she won’t ask Marian for, and before him she seems small and vulnerable, laid open before him in ways Marian's never seen before. It’s all building up to something she isn’t certain she’s ready for, and Marian clears her throat, suddenly uneasy. Regina stands up so quickly that the bench shifts. 

 

No, it _moves_ , throwing Robin off of it as it crashes toward Marian, and she’s flung backward so swiftly that she can’t stop- can’t stop at all, beyond windmilling her arms and struggling to move, and she sees is Emma hurtling toward her but trapped in place, and Robin is shouting her name but isn’t moving either when she’s thrown into the water.

 

She sinks below, deeper and deeper in the shallow pond, her head pressed to the bottom of it as she fights to keep herself from breathing. 

 

She can’t die. Not again. Not knowing what she’s lost, knowing what they’ll lose again. Roland, a growing child now who’s just beginning to know her. Robin someone else entirely, someone she’s desperate to understand again when she feels as though there are more than physical worlds between them. She’s been given a second chance and it’s gone already, drifting away with every moment she’s paralyzed beneath the water.

 

And then slender arms wrap around her waist, tugging her up as though there’s nothing weighing her down anymore, and she turns in her grasp and gapes at the woman holding onto her, feet somewhere behind her and eyes determined even though she won’t quite meet Marian’s.

 

She chokes when they reach the surface, spurting out water from her mouth, and Regina still holds her upright, her face unreadable as she supports her. They’re both soaking, hair flat to their faces and Marian shivering in the cold, and Regina says, “Breathe. You need to breathe.” 

 

“I’m-“ She coughs out more water. “ _Trying_.”

 

“Something is very wrong,” Regina mutters, looking disturbed. “I need you to come with me.” 

 

“She’s not going anywhere with you,” Robin growls, and he’s pulling himself to his feet now, finally capable of moving. And Marian is inclined to agree with Regina that something is very wrong. “There’s your dishwasher, Emma,” he says as Emma shifts closer, holding a hand out to Regina as Robin does the same for Marian.

 

Regina shrugs off Emma’s touch and vanishes and reappears in a puff of smoke on the ground, dry as though she’d never been in the water. “Don’t be ridiculous, I’m not trying to kill your wife,” she nearly growls.

 

His jaw works under his skin. “Again.” 

 

“ _Again_.” She grits her teeth. “I’ve been…this is an enchantment. Come with me,” she orders Marian again. “We need to investigate this.” 

 

“I will not leave you alone with her,” Robin says stubbornly.

 

Marian flares up, more aware than ever of their newly drastic age difference. Robin had been older than her to begin with, and with five more years between them, she feels like a child being coddled. “I can make my own decisions,” she snaps out. Regina quirks an eyebrow, curiosity superseding resentment, and Robin looks…embarrassed.

 

It’s Emma who speaks, as quick as always to try and diffuse the tension in the moment. “Why don’t I come with you guys?”

 

“Why don’t you leave me alone?” Regina says in the exact same tone as Robin had spoken to her. They glare at each other, the air heavy with regrets and hurt and too much left unsaid, and Marian sighs.

 

“Both of you. Please.” She feels as though she’s scrabbling for purchase in a world sliding away from her with every moment she remains within it, and she can’t cope with all the stories that intersect with hers and remain elusive.

 

Thankfully, they don’t argue with her, just trail side-by-side behind her until Emma catches up and stands between them protectively. Regina sighs and walks on.

 

* * *

 

“I’m sorry Robin feels as though he must be cruel with you,” she says. Emma is still between them as they approach the pawn shop, and it’s easier to say it when she can’t look directly at Regina.

 

“I would have killed his wife if you hadn’t been rescued,” Regina retorts. “Of course he hates me. I’d expect nothing less.” But she’s trembling, her steps faltering, and Emma puts a hand on Regina’s wrist. Regina yanks it away. “What do you care, anyway?” 

 

Marian swallows. This is the anger of the Evil Queen, the woman who’d terrorized her for weeks to make an _example_ of her, and it’s difficult to be magnanimous with her. But she’s grown up with noble thieves and cruel sheriffs and residing in shades of grey for so long have her uncertain at Regina’s obvious pain. She doesn't look evil like this, she doesn't even look like a queen. She looks weary and tangible in ways she'd only been as a girl. 

 

“I don’t think he hates you. I think he feels as though he must be cruel to you.” It’s a fine difference, perhaps, but she can see from Regina’s chin- up again, always raised around her- that it’s stricken something within her.

 

“He should stop holding her accountable for things that aren’t _her_ anymore,” Emma says loyally, and Regina laughs bitterly.

 

“You know nothing of who I am.” 

 

“I know a hell of a lot more than you like to pretend,” Emma returns, fierce and unintimidated. “You used to appreciate that.” 

 

Regina’s eyes narrow. “I used to trust you. I’ve learned my lesson.” She’s moving quickly again, taking the lead, and she pushes the door to the shop open before Emma can say anything more.

 

* * *

 

 _Destiny._ That’s what the Dark One tells them, an odd strain on his face whenever he speaks to Regina. That’s what they’re facing here. An inevitable ending. Regina has orchestrated her death once, and she’ll do it again, because that’s the only way this story can end. No one can interfere, not even Marian herself, and only Regina can control whether or not that moment is the one that decides her fate.

 

Marian’s dazed, helpless, the world around her slipping away. She isn’t a _victim_. She isn’t going to sit back and wait for the woman rigid beside her to murder her, let her fade away into nothingness again. She’s seen the world without her and it staggers her, how simple it’s been for her family to endure. How she doesn’t fit at all with these changed people, and perhaps she should surrender to that now, but it only firms her resolution to live. 

 

“I can't believe that,” she says, shaking her head. “I can’t…I can’t be on the execution block _again_. Haven’t I lost enough?”

 

Emma’s fingers touch her shoulder, soft and regretful, and Regina turns on her heel and stalks toward the door before the Dark One says, “Ah-ah-ah, Regina. There’s a _little_ snag in this that you’re not considering right now.” He points a long, slender finger at Marian. “You don’t want to lose the dead weight?” 

 

“Of course she doesn't,” Emma says immediately, and Regina’s lip curls but she says nothing either way. Marian stands still, somewhere between terrified and furious at the phrasing.

 

“Remember that it’s not as simple as just staying away.” The Dark One wiggles his fingers. “Magic, dearie. Beyond even your control if you’re not careful.” 

 

Regina’s spine straightens. “What do you recommend?” She bites it out with bitterness, as though just asking for help is too much for her. Emma’s eyebrow quirks as though she’s had the same thought, and they share a knowing glance. 

 

“Contact. All the contact you can spare. You walk out of your house in the morning? You tell each other where you are. You meet up as often as you can when she isn’t surrounded by others and is vulnerable. No surprises, no unexpected murders. And the girl lives a few more days until you slip up.”

 

Regina storms out the door halfway through the Dark One’s last sentence. She’s angry, stiff with fury and still shaking, and it strikes Marian as wholly unfair that _Regina_ is acting as though this is her burden, as though she’s the one being personally victimized by fate today. 

 

She’s felt like she’s been walking on eggshells for weeks since she’d been brought back from the past, like anything she might do to disturb the peace would be an intrusion. She focuses on fading into the background, on not interfering in the lives of those who don’t want her around, to be… _acceptable_. She’s aware she’s been given a second lease on life and that she doesn’t belong, and her reaction to that has been instinctive. _Retreat, retreat, retreat_. 

 

And she’s tired of it, now that she knows she has nothing to lose. That it’s only a matter of time before she’s killed properly, so what does it matter if she irritates the woman who will kill her anyway? “Wait!”

 

Regina doesn’t turn, and Marian pulls away from Emma to hurry after her. “I said, _wait_!”

 

Regina quickens her step, but Marian’s spent enough of her life running through thorny underbrush to be fleet-footed with no effort, catching up to the other woman with ease. Regina’s face hardens. “I want nothing to do with you. Begone, little girl.”

 

She narrows her eyes. “I apologize that my living has inconvenienced you so deeply.” 

 

“Oh, you have no idea,” Regina snaps back. Her fingers are pressed against her thumbs, Marian notices, too loose to be a fist but enough that she’s holding something frightening back. “I don’t want to be shackledto _you_. To your _damned_ destiny.” 

 

She notices the spark out of the corner of her eyes, shooting from Regina’s fingers so quickly, messy and unpredictable, that she knows it isn’t intentional. And then she tries to move and _can’t_ and she knows that this is another attack, another moment out of her control. “Regina!” she says desperately, eyes following the purple spark of magic as it races toward one of the tall wooden poles at the edge of the sidewalk.

 

Regina spins toward her, eyes flicking up to the pole, and she mutters an expletive. "I am—" But she's hurling a fireball at it, then another and another and another as her face darkens, and Marian's caught by the seething fury that slides over the stiffness in her eyes to arm her, to have her standing and pitching fire at the wood until the flames are climbing up toward the wiring at the top of the pole. “ _Finished_ ," Regina grits out as the pole breaks and falls away from them. Marian can move again, can hurry back out of the path of the fire and toward the awning of the closest shop. "With _fucking destiny_." 

 

She hurls fireball after fireball of an inexhaustible supply until she's shaking and snapping out half-finished sentences with rage and frustration, all contained within her tiny frame and palpable like heat and fire itself. And yet there's no malice, none of that purring mockery that Marian had become so familiar with when imprisoned. This is a woman trapped, and Marian's fairly certain that had she been capable of magic, she'd be unleashing the same fury on that post. 

 

There's a strange catharsis to it, to being a part of it; and she jolts when a red-clad figure runs forward to restrain Regina, hands seizing her at the bicep and spinning her around to face her. "Regina, cut it out. You're going to start an electrical fire."

 

Regina shudders, the frustration gone as quickly as Emma Swan touches her. "This town could do with an electrical fire," she mutters, but the flames are gone an instant later, the wooden post returned to its former glory with a wave of her hand. She presses a hand to her forehead, suddenly looking very, very old. "You."

 

"Yeah?" Emma looks hopeful, like a child earning a sought-for gift of approval, and Regina almost smiles before she startles- remembering herself, undoubtedly, and the odd quarrel she has with Emma that has Marian even more uncomfortable around her- and turns away, her lips hardening into a scowl. 

 

"No, not _you_. Her." It's tired and without her usual aloofness, and Marian doesn't realize that they're talking about her until she glances back at Regina and catches her gaze. “Rumple is inventing new annoyances. Stay away from me and you'll live, I suppose. I'm not interested in being anywhere around you, either."

 

She nods. There’s an air to Regina when she issues commands that allows no dissent, that leaves her bobbing her head like a fool as the woman stalks off like she’s been scorned for just being in their presence, and Emma rolls her neck and sighs, “Why do I even bother?” But she’s staring after Regina, lips pressed together and eyes seeking something even from the haughty gait that Marian doesn’t understand.

 

And does, somehow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story went from "Hey, wouldn't it be great to write a Swan Queen oneshot from an outsider POV?" to a determination to give Marian a voice so quickly that I don't even know how it happened. There will be plenty of shippiness still, no worries! 
> 
> And somehow it also ballooned into an enormous fic (25k and I still have a few bits to write in!) but it is pretty much finished and should be posted in about five parts, unless something changes. I'll update weekly or probably even more often if I get bored, lol. Please do let me know if you're enjoying! This chapter was more about setting the scene than anything, but we'll get into it in the next one~
> 
> Oh, and about 15k into the fic I noticed that I'd forgotten Hook existed. Let's pretend that after that final scene of the finale Emma asked him to consider changing his vest, and it brought on an existential crisis for him that has launched him on a sartorial quest away from Storybrooke, complete with swashbuckling adventure and broken eyeliner pencils. And alas, I'd rather set my keyboard on fire than write that story, so I leave it to your capable imaginations. :)


	2. Chapter 2

Regina is still on her mind later that day when she returns to Robin and gets a strained smile in return. Everything she’d once been given openly now feels forced, heavy with emotions behind it that Robin refuses to speak of. 

 

They’d always been free and easy together before now. Robin had had a ready smile and a simplicity to his heart, and he’d been quick to offer her affection. She’d been younger and stubborn and had thought of him only as a flirtation, a dangerous thief in the woods who could only be a distraction. But she’d kept riding with him and he’d never asked for more until his face had been the first and last thing she’d thought of every day. 

 

They’d never had secrets between each other and they’d never truly feared anything. Even when she’d been pregnant and dying, she’d never doubted that he would be able to save her. Even when he’d been locked in lords’ prisons, she hadn’t even paused before she’d begun negotiating political minefields to rescue him. They’d been young and reckless and in love and there had been no weight in their hearts when they’d had each other.

 

And for that recklessness, she’d been captured and nearly killed.

 

And now she’s a stranger in a new land, a mother who’d never known her child while her husband had grown into his role. While her husband had added layers to his face, piled them on until he’s just as alien to her as everyone else here. 

 

 _Who are you?_ she doesn’t ask him as they examine a tree frozen solid near the edge of town. Instead she tells him what they’d discovered and watches as his face darkens.

 

“I want to speak with her about this. Surely there must be some way we can stop it.” She curls an arm around Roland and he stares up at her, perplexed at the force behind it. “Do you think she can be trusted?”

 

“No,” he says immediately, and another mask clamps into place over his face. 

 

She hurts at it, at the lie in his voice. “Please, Robin. If she’s my only hope, I need to know who she is.”

 

“You know who she is.” 

 

She thinks of Regina, hurling fireballs at a pole like she’s been caged by it. Of unrestrained fury that vanishes when directed at a person, and of arms underwater tugging her away from certain death. “I only know who she was.” She bites her lip. “Tell me who she is. Can I trust her?” she repeats, and he looks pained. 

 

She sighs. “Please don’t seek to spare my feelings when all I want is the truth.” She understands his dilemma, appreciates his loyalty to her even now, but it’s come to the point where all she craves is _answers_ , as upsetting as they may be.

 

He leans back against another tree, shifting uncomfortably as he murmurs, “Yes. You can trust her. She won’t hurt you, not intentionally. She isn’t…she is no longer who she was.”

 

He looks guilty, uncertain, as though she’s forced him to admit something so much worse than an alliance with the Evil Queen, and she sighs again, folding her hands against her abdomen and tangling her fingers together. “Thank you.” 

 

* * *

 

“I want you to protect me.” 

 

“What?” Regina is still staring at her, door half open and a hand resting against it and Marian can see the exact moment when she remembers her manners and startles. “Why don’t you come inside?”

 

There’s a brief episode where Regina offers her cider and the glass smashes into shards in her fist, nearly cutting Marian in the eye before Regina flicks her finger and makes the glass whole again. They eschew the cider and Marian follows Regina past the foyer.

 

A boy– Emma’s boy with Regina– sits cross-legged on the couch in Regina’s living room, squinting down at a binder. There's a bright yellow marker caught between his teeth, and as they enter, he removes it to highlight a strip of text. “Mom, is this a mistake in the budget or is King George really fostering Lost Boys?” 

 

“No, I’m afraid it’s true. He’s been talking about his legacy again, and as he’s one of the few people to agree to foster them, we couldn’t turn him down.” Regina rolls her eyes. “One of these days, someone should remind your mother that she doesn’t have to bring back _everyone_ she meets in every realm. Not every visitor has a built-in family awaiting them.”

 

Her son mirrors her eye roll. “ _Mom_ , when are you going to–“ His voice stops abruptly as he looks up and sees Marian for the first time. “Maid Marian.” He says it formally, but his hands squeeze around the marker and his jaw clamps shut and then he’s standing up, angling himself between his mother and her. As though _she’s_ a threatto the _Evil Queen_. “What are you doing here?” 

 

“Henry!” Regina says sharply, but the baby-faced boy she’d seen at Granny’s and wandering around with Emma and their hands deep in matching jackets is gone. In his place is the son who would be king, steely-eyed and protective, a boy she would have believed had been his mother's only partner in life if she hadn't known Emma. 

 

And she has a host of feelings to sort through when it comes to mothers and sons, and somehow the hostility from the boy is only drawing out respect and longing. She musters up a smile for him, more wistful than she’d meant to display, and Regina glances at her once before she murmurs, “It’s all right, sweetheart. This isn’t…it has nothing to do with…” Regina is pursing her lips, uncertain in ways Marian has never seen from her before, and her voice trails off.

 

But Henry seems to understand anyway. He gives his mother a small smile and nods toward her- still hostile, but now it’s vague and undirected. “I’m gonna go put this back in your office and head up to bed.” He hugs Regina, arms out wide before he wraps them around her and shuts his eyes, and Regina holds on so tightly and for so long that Marian’s uncomfortable and out of place and more than a little envious.

 

She gets one last warning look from him and Regina exhales as he disappears up the stairs. “He’ll be up all night with a flashlight and comic books,” she says to herself, but she’s smiling fondly and Marian thinks about Roland again, who doesn’t quite understand affection from the strange woman he’s supposed to call Mama. 

 

It’s a relief when Regina directs her glare back on Marian and she doesn’t have to contemplate Roland again, this Roland who isn’t tiny and needy and gurgles smiles at her and she’d seen only weeks ago. “You said you wanted me to…protect you?” She sits on one couch and Marian settles on the second, gathering her resolve again.

 

“Yes.” 

 

“Isn’t that a bit counter-intuitive?”

 

Marian puts one hand on top of the other, then switches them. Then moves them back to how they’d been. When she looks up, Regina is watching her hands, a hint of amusement in her eyes. “You didn’t have any control over the magic that hit that post today.” 

 

Regina looks offended, then guarded. “No.”

 

“Then what happens when your magic next tries to have me killed? When you don’t see it coming and I don’t and then I’m dead because no one but you can stop it?” She’d rehearsed her pitch on the way here, over and over again, but under Regina’s gaze she feels woefully unprepared. ( _Be direct_ , Robin had said. _She’ll respect you for it._ She wonders if that’s how he had gained the respect of the Evil Queen as well.)

 

She takes in a deep breath. “You would have had me killed once. And the people here…well, most of them don’t trust you, but there are some who say that you’ve changed.” Regina watches her unflinchingly, her jaw working under her skin. “So prove it.”

 

“I have nothing to prove to you,” Regina says coolly. “I won’t be manipulated into being your guard dog.” 

 

“Fine.” She can feel old stubbornness rising, the woman she’d been before a dungeon and this town had doused her fire, and she forgets to censor her words. “Don’t do it because of that. Do it because you owe me.” 

 

“I owe you?” Regina laughs, bitter and low. “You have _no idea_.” 

 

Self-righteous irritation bubbles up. “Yes, you owe me! You took my life away. You took me away from my husband, my son…you would have _executed_ me.” Regina is silent, a foot curling around the other ankle. “And if you won’t keep me from being executed by you proper, then you’re still my killer. Unintentional or not.” 

 

She glares at Regina, frustrated and angry, and Regina turns away to stare at the empty fireplace. She wonders if Regina would light it now, if it would burst into flames and consume her in an instant. She thinks she could spend the rest of her short life waiting, waiting, seeing every movement of the wind as another way for her to die.

 

She feels more helpless than she ever had locked in a prison insisting that she wouldn’t give away Snow White. At least then she’d been able to make her own decisions, to protect the people she’d loved and die for them. Here she’s nothing more than a shadow, a prolonged dead woman walking, drifting apart in the breeze as Regina turns back to face her. 

 

“What do you want from me?” Regina says, and it’s as though her face _slides_ , as though the lines of her face relax into someone else entirely. Into the tired woman she’d been on that bench with Robin, into the woman she’d been when Emma had seized her by the arm. And she isn’t fearsome or imposing or anyone more than just a woman. The woman who had once been a girl who had once been in King Xavier’s palace and avoided her eyes. “What more can I do?” 

 

“I don’t know!” Tears spring to her eyes, useless and humiliating, and she blinks them back as Regina watches her silently. There’s no mockery in her eyes, no pity, nothing but exhaustion. And she’s tired too, of every day of uphill battles and secrets and this world where she doesn’t belong. _Regina’s_ world. “I just…I don’t want to die,” she whispers, flushing at the confession to her once and future executioner.

 

Something flashes across Regina’s eyes, compassion where she’d never been gifted it before. “All right,” Regina murmurs. “Then you won’t.” 

 

She says it like it’s the simplest thing on earth, as though it’s a regal edict made fact. _You won’t die_ , the Queen Regina utters, and fate itself must bow to her whims. And in that moment, Marian dares believe.

 

* * *

 

 _Granny’s_. _Eight AM._ That’s what the message on Robin’s phone had said, curt and to the point. They’re coordinating times now, sending messages back and forth to keep the other posted on where they’re going to be so there are no surprises, and Marian doesn’t quite know if this one was an invitation or just a statement. 

 

But she comes anyway, sits in a booth a few minutes before eight and contemplates the phone she’s borrowed while she waits for Regina. When she touches the plastic screen it reacts to her finger, moves from side to side as she traces it, and she’s lost in something that looks like a game, maybe? A targeting weapon? Are those bananas? when a familiar voice says, “Hey you. I didn’t think I’d see you here again after last time.” 

 

Emma slides into the bench opposite her and she shrugs and tells her, “Actually, I’m meeting the Queen here.”

 

Emma winces. “I don’t think she likes to be called that. Though, I mean, you can call her whatever you want.” She shifts, her tongue dipping out to nervously swipe at her lips. “It just…it might make her cranky.”

 

Emma’s from this world, she knows, and she’d only ever known Regina as just a woman until recently. “You’ve seen her as the Queen now, though. She was going to execute you. She nearly did execute your mother.” She’d been there for the sobbing and the horror and Emma staring blankly into a fire. “You can’t tell me that it’s so easy for you to see only Regina now.”

 

“Oh.” Emma leans back, contemplative. “Yeah. She was kind of a handful back then, wasn’t she?” But there’s something fond in her eyes even now, a spark that Marian’s only seen her have when Regina is mentioned. “It didn’t feel very real to me, though. Not knowing who she is now. Not even knowing the kind of sociopathic bitch-in-heels she’d been back when we’d first met. That wasn’t my Regina.” 

 

“And this isn’t the Queen,” Marian counters, and thoughts of a fifteen-year-old girl riding bareback beside her are as pervasive as ever. She understands what Emma is saying, because the Queen had never felt so authentic as this Regina who holds her son tightly and sits in Granny’s with her family does. She’d been cruel and merciless and evil and she’d never felt like a _person_ as much as an unstoppable force.

 

“What are you two meeting for, anyway?” Emma asks curiously. “Brainstorming on a way to save your life?”

 

“Essentially, I guess.” She rubs her fingers against the table, setting the phone down as she does. “I didn’t think she’d be so willing to save me. She…she seems to dislike me more than most anyone else in this town.”

 

Emma squirms in her seat, and it’s almost as though she seems guilty rather than apologetic. “It’s not you, really. Regina doesn’t like being told what to do, especially by some crappy higher forces that decide shit like what kind of person you’re going to be. Destiny’s kind of screwed her over a lot.” She stares at the table for a minute. “And she just lost a sister and a true love because of it, so she’s a little vulnerable right now.”

 

“A true love?” Marian frowns. “But you’re still…” Whatever had happened between them, it’s Regina who’s been pushing Emma away, not the opposite. She can’t imagine how destiny could be responsible for that. “You do still love her, don’t you?” 

 

But Emma’s eyebrows shoot up and she looks perplexed. “What? I…what?” She’s so pale normally that now she looks positively ghostlike, eyes wide and face white as a flush creeps to her cheeks. “I don’t– I mean we were friends, maybe, but _love_ is a pretty strong word. And she doesn't. Love me, I mean. Never did.”

 

Now it’s Marian who’s confused. “But you had a child together. And she seems so brokenhearted around you.” She might not know them well, but she knows enough to recognize Emma’s eyes around Regina and Regina’s pain around Emma.

 

“Yeah.” Emma presses her fingers to her forehead. “I did something…something good, I think. But it screwed things up for Regina and she’s been angry at me for it. Which is completely unreasonable, but Regina’s kind of unreasonable all the time.” Her expression is somewhere between frustrated and affectionate, and Marian keeps wisely silent about it. “There’s also…” _Now_ she sees guilt, spreading across Emma’s face like she’s been unmasked before the world, and there’s an audible gulp from the other side of the table. “But it’s not about that. Uh. And Henry’s…complicated. I gave him up for adoption when he was born and Regina raised him. I only met him again a couple of years ago. No love. Not at all.” 

 

She’s still pink, but Marian’s too distracted by her last admission to focus any more on her relationship with Regina. “You only met him a couple of years ago?” 

 

“Yeah. He was ten and very determined to bring me back here to break the curse. I tried to stay away, but…yeah.” She turns her hands over, palms-up in a _what can you do?_ “I fell in love with the kid and I don’t think I had much choice in the matter, anyway.”

 

“But he didn’t know you then.”

 

Emma pulls a napkin from the dispenser on the table, rolls it between her fingers. “He wanted me to be a hero for him. He had…expectations, I guess.” She glances up to meet Marian’s eyes, and Marian’s startled at the understanding within them. “Roland doesn’t expect anything of you, and I think that’ll be easier in the long run.” 

 

She feels selfish to admit it, but the words emerge anyway. “He doesn’t need me. He was happy without me.”

 

Emma’s face softens. “You can’t think about it like that. He’s a kid. They adapt to whatever they’ve got. I spent most of my childhood being moved from family to family and I glommed onto whoever would show me _any_ affection before I learned.” She winds the napkin around her index finger. “You’ll get to know Roland, you’ll figure out who he is and he’ll figure you out, and you’ll be special to him in no time. Just be grateful you didn’t meet him when he was twenty-eight, because trust me, _that’s_ a shitstorm.”

 

She laughs, not placing the word but divining its meaning regardless, and she knows that Emma’s right. That time is the only way for her to _connect_ with Roland like she craves. “And if I don’t have much time left?” 

 

Emma glances behind her for a moment, toward the doorway where Regina is walking inside with an arm around Henry. “You know, I think it’ll be good for someone else to need Regina, too.” She slides against the wall as Henry catches sight of them and sits down next to Emma, leaving Regina to sit awkwardly beside Marian.

 

“Good morning,” she says formally, and catches a light fixture from above them as her magic sparks out to slice off the metal piece that had held it to the wall. “Miss Swan.” She looks as though she’s itching for nothing more than to send Emma off, but Emma’s pressing her lips together stubbornly and Henry looks pleading and she sighs. “Talking about old adventures? Grand escapes from my dungeons?” 

 

“ _Mom_ –“ 

 

“Nah, your dungeons were a joke. I could have broken out of them when I was just a kid,” Emma sits back, smirking under Regina’s glare. “And I hope you fired whoever was guarding us, because they sucked.”

 

Marian closes her eyes. There’s no way Emma can be so naive, or… “Wait.” Emma leans forward. “You did fire them, didn’t you? You didn’t…” She looks suddenly sick.

 

Henry is glancing from mother to mother with concern, and Regina stiffens. “Yes, Emma,” she lies blatantly. “I _fired_ them. Maybe you should have taken that into account when you started freeing prisoners.”

 

Her eyes cross Henry’s and he ducks his head, staring down at the table. “I want to eat now,” he says.

 

Regina looks affronted, Emma is still twitching, and Marian plays with the phone in her hand, sneaking glances at the rest of the table. “Of course, if they’d still worked for methey’d have likely been murdered by your mother when she stormed my castle,” she says, and Emma jerks her head up again, eyes wide with disbelief. “More than half my guard was killed that day.”

 

And Marian wants nothing more to dispel the tension, to keep a little boy still looking at his mothers like they're his world, so she swallows hard and points out, “It’s a very different world than this one. More death. Less paperwork.” 

 

Regina barks out a startled laugh and she glances over at Marian, gratitude in her eyes. “Indeed,” she agrees. “How about chocolate chip pancakes today?” Henry’s face lights up, the shameless bribe accepted, and he can’t run to the counter fast enough.

 

“I didn’t know,” Emma mumbles. “I didn’t think–“ 

 

“Yes, I’ve noticed,” Regina says dryly. “Though I suppose if you haven’t seen any major changes in the timeline, they were due for death anyway. Just perhaps not at my hands.” 

 

Emma’s fingers are tapping against the table now, and she’s caught somewhere between shame and stubborn denial, mouth opening and closing as her face sags and tightens, and Marian sneaks a peek at Regina and sees that she’s watching Emma, too. “I remember you from the ball,” she says suddenly. “That red dress…”

 

“You remember my dress?” Emma repeats, wrinkling her brow. “I mean, I remember _yours_ , but that was two weeks ago and it was kind of memorable. Not like the riding coat, though, that was something else. Did they have some law in the Enchanted Forest against women covering up their…” She gestures at her chest, then looks at Regina’s, then turns beet red.

 

Regina looks as though she’s holding back a smile, and her face isn’t entirely unlike Emma’s had been earlier when she’d talked about Regina. Exasperated, but too fond to be _that_ angry. “You were the insolent captive who called me Regina instead of Your Majesty. I was angry and not entirely–“ She stops abruptly. 

 

Emma cocks her head. “Not entirely…?”

 

Regina’s head swivels so quickly that Marian’s almost afraid it’ll fall off. “Lady Marian. How have you been adjusting to this world?”

 

Emma starts to speak again, and Marian interrupts, suddenly concerned for Emma’s future if she provokes Regina again. “It’s…all very new. I feel like every day I find something else that doesn’t make sense to me.” She squints down at the phone again. “What is this?” 

 

Emma peers over at it, distracted at once. “Fruit Ninja, I think. Look, you have to swipe this button over here, and then it’ll start the game over for you.”

 

“Have you given any thought to employment within the town?” Regina says, yanking the phone from Emma’s hands before she can start swiping. Emma gives her the stink eye and mumbles something about her electrocuting Marian that they all ignore.

 

Marian says, “I think first I’m going to work on surviving.” 

 

“Hm.” Regina doesn’t sound very pleased with that response, and Marian feels suddenly defensive.

 

“I spent enough time in your dungeon thinking of my family to waste any time I might have left without them,” she points out, peeved. “My baby son…I had a _future_ with him once, and now I have it again. I have a second chance with my husband, and I won’t take that lightly. I don’t–“ She stops, noticing finally that Regina is sitting rigidly in her spot and Emma is shaking her head from side to side, her face green again.

 

“I think I have to go to the bathroom,” Emma says, banging her knee in her rush to exit the stall. “Ah! Shit. Regina, come with me.” 

 

To Marian’s surprise, Regina doesn’t object, just takes the hand offered and stands unsteadily as Emma nearly drags her toward the back hall of the diner. Marian blinks after them, certain that she’s missing something.

 

“Hi.” Henry returns, an enormous plate of pancakes in his arms. He bounds off and returns a minute later with four smaller plates, his forehead straightening itself out again. “Are you done talking about fairytale land now?” 

 

“I think so.” She frowns, noting the relief on his face before she glances back toward the bathroom. “Is it normal in this world for women to go to the toilet in pairs?” 

 

“Yeah, I think so. Not my moms so much unless they’re up to something. But they’ve been weird since right before Emma went to the past, anyway.” His brow furrows. “I guess I get it.” 

 

“Do you?”

 

He shrugs, uncomfortable. “Listen, I know my mom did some bad stuff in the past. Really bad stuff. I read the book. But she isn’t a bad guy anymore.” He slides down to Emma’s seat so he  can face her, earnest-faced under long bangs. “She’s a hero now.” 

 

He takes two pancakes off the pile and puts them on a plate, offering it to her before he chooses his own. Well-mannered, as a royal’s child should be. She doesn’t doubt that Regina has raised him well, if a little naive. “Do you think it’s that simple? That you can make that decision after all your mother’s done?” She doesn’t think he understands exactly what that list comprises of, but she doubts he’d look as kindly upon her executing a village for treason as he does the poisoned apple she’d supposedly offered Snow.

 

“Yes.” He says it with firmness. “I know about heroes and villains. I know my mom and I know how hard she’s been trying, and villains don’t try to be good like that. Villains don’t love like Mom does.”

 

She tries a pancake. It’s good, decadent like the food she’d once had in Nottingham before she’d run. And when she looks up, Henry is holding up a flask of what looks like syrup. “No, thank you. This is more than enough sugar for me.”

 

“More for me, then.” He pours it liberally onto his own plate, and they eat with appreciative murmurs, trading turns peering back toward where Emma and Regina had vanished. 

 

She can’t help but observe Henry, though, and wonder at this boy who can assert so strongly his faith in a woman he knows had once been the scourge of his other mother’s family. Who placidly eats pancakes and insists that Regina is a hero. “What if she isn’t?” she asks, and he sets his fork down. “What if there are no heroes like that and she can’t be who you think she is?” She thinks about Emma’s revelation from earlier and Roland, about it being easier without the expectations. About the way Henry talks about heroes and villains like there’s nothing in between.

 

He shovels another forkful into his mouth, looking perturbed. “She’s my _mom_ ,” he says, swallowing. “She loves me.” He smiles at her, and it’d be almost condescending on an older face. On a boy who didn’t love his mother. “You don’t know her here. You’ll get it. It took me a while, too.”

 

She’s about to ask him more, but then Regina and Emma finally emerge from the back hall. Emma’s gaze is on Regina and Regina is avoiding her eyes, but her lips are thin and pressed downward and– Marian can see from her position when she looks straight ahead– her fingers are loose around Emma’s arm, a thumb sliding up and down her wrist under her jacket. 

 

* * *

 

“I don’t _want_ to be around you,” she says when they finish their meal, all strained silence and Emma turning bright red every time Regina glares at her and Henry struggling valiantly to pretend that all is normal. Regina, for her part, cuts into her pancakes stoically and nearly stabs Emma when she reaches for one (and actually stabs Marian a moment later, but pulls the utensil from her chest and heals her in an instant), and when Henry and Emma duck out to school and work, respectively, they’re left alone. And Marian is desperate to explain that this isn’t her ideal, either.

 

Regina raises her eyebrows. “We have some common ground, then. I have no interest in being saddled with another of my victims. Snow White is bad enough.”

 

Regina isn’t being friendly, exactly, but she isn’t setting her on fire. So progress. “This isn’t how I wanted to live my life. I used to think…if I’d ever escape that dungeon…I’d stay home with my family. I’d stop taking risks. I never dreamed I would be trapped, alone in the future counting down the days to my death.” She stares down at her uneaten breakfast. Emma had insisted that she try Granny’s grilled cheese, but she finds her appetite failing her when seated beside the Evil Queen. 

 

Regina is silent for a long time, and she sneaks a peek in her direction to see Regina staring back at her, looking anguished. “You have that now,” she whispers. “You have your family and I have…” She shakes her head. “Justice,” she says finally, and Marian thinks about Henry and Emma and Snow’s family at the table with them and she wonders how Regina can think that it’s just that she has all that.But _she just lost a sister and a true love_ , Emma had said, and Marian feels petty for her spite.

 

“I have justice,” Regina says again. “And you will not die.”

 

* * *

 

True to her word, Regina is with her at all times when they aren’t at work or in their respective homes for the night. Regina won't come anywhere near the forest dwellings of the Merry Men- “I could wind up starting a forest fire, or deforest our entire woods,” she says with a disapproving frown, as though Marian is somehow conspiring to do so- and they have a running theory that Regina will only attack her when she’s alone. “I drove past you twice that day,” Regina tells her. “Once you were the furthest from the street, and the second time– when I lost control of the car– you were the closest.” 

 

One early morning–  _Sunday_ , Mulan says, when even the mayor doesn’t work– she stops by the diner in the morning with Mulan (and Roland behind her, lagging and holding onto the other woman’s hand. She knows that Robin had asked Mulan to join her, but she isn’t certain if she’s annoyed that he’s trying to protect her from Regina or annoyed that he’s trying to make Roland comfortable with someone else) and finds only Emma and Henry there together, two impressively sized milkshakes on the table in front of them. Emma licks her lips, half-ashamed, half-proud, and Henry doesn’t miss a beat. “You don’t mention this to my mom and I don’t tell her about the lamp you broke yesterday. Deal?” 

 

“Deal,” she agrees, winking at Mulan. “Where is your mother?” 

 

“Gardening.” Henry makes a face. “It’s Sunday. I’m with Mom– Emma Mom– today.” 

 

“We need a better system, kid.” Emma Mom frowns at her milkshake. “New Mom name for one of us.” She considers, and they can all see the moment she nixes her first plan. “For me,” she clarifies.

 

Roland is looking longingly at the milkshake. Actually, _Mulan_ is too, and they wind up stopping down the block at the ice cream parlor for milkshakes of their own, Marian and Roland sharing one and Mulan with the other as they make their way toward Regina’s manor. The house is silent, the only sounds from the side yard, and Marian calls out, “Regina?” an instant before a pair of pruning shears come spinning toward her face.

 

They freeze mere millimeters from Marian, and Regina snatches them out of the air. “Texted warnings, Marian,” she reminds her. She sounds cranky, more so than usual, and then her eyes drift down to the boy still clutching onto Mulan’s hand and she says, in a very different tone, “Roland!” 

 

“Regina!” He drops Mulan’s hand and runs to her, stubby little arms outstretched as she lifts him into her arms. “I got a milkshake like Henry’s!” 

 

Her eyes are soft and sad as she regards him, her voice so soothing that Marian’s too busy gaping at them to register what she’s asking. “Really? Did Emma get one, too?” 

 

“Uh-huh!” 

 

“How big was it?” 

 

Roland spreads his hands. “So big! Mama said it was too big for me, though. I got a little one.” His face sours and Regina’s arms tremble, and Marian remembers too late that she and Henry had had a deal. She can't think about lamps or Henry, not when Roland seems to just _fit_ in Regina’s arms, when he’s talking a mile a minute and Regina is holding him with such uncertainty that Marian’s envious and uncomfortable and longing all at the same time. 

 

Her son adores everyone but her, and she follows them numbly to the garden where Regina produces a little shovel and shows Roland how to dig little holes in the soil and put them on a flat tarp she has. “Marian,” she says suddenly, and Marian starts. “Why don’t you work with Roland?”

 

She blinks down at her son, hunched over with his eyes narrowed as he carves into the ground. “I…yes. Thank you.”

 

Regina offers her a thin smile. “I used to turn over the soil out here with Henry on weekends when he was Roland’s age. He’d get filthy, but he loved doing the work with me. And afterward, we’d turn on the sprinkler to rinse him off before he came inside. You.” She changes tack immediately, turning to Mulan. “Have you ever weeded a garden before?” Mulan shakes her head. “Well, you don’t wack at them with your sword,” she says impatiently. “Get down on the ground with me unless you plan on glaring at me all day.”

 

Mulan looks startled, but she does as Regina says, and Marian listens to them with half an ear as Regina instructs Mulan. She remembers this woman from King Xavier’s palace, patient and clear and kind, and if not for the strained formality in her voice, she might have mistaken them for each other.

 

They work in near-silence for a while, Roland focused on his task as Marian follows him along. “You dig here now.” 

 

“Okay.” 

 

“Make it bigger, though. A Papa hole.” 

 

She touches the ground where he’d dug the last hole. “Is this a Mama hole?” He nods seriously and she digs out a scoop with her trowel. “So this is a Roland hole.” 

 

“Too little. That’s Aurora’s baby’s hole.” He sticks his shovel into it. “ _Now_ it’s a Roland hole.”

 

“Are you sure? That looks like a Henry hole to me. Or maybe it’s big enough to be a Henry’s milkshake hole.” Roland giggles and she grins back at him, her heart soaring for a single moment. “How are we going to fit all the dirt from a Papa hole into a milkshake hole?” Roland mulls it over and she stretches, turning as she does to see Regina sneaking a glance at her. “Thank you,” she says formally. “This _is_ nice. I used to do this with my mother.” 

 

“I was always forbidden.” Regina turns back to her own patch of dirt. “I tried once with the cook’s daughter and my mother…” She pauses. “Disapproved. Thought it was beneath me, I suppose.” 

 

“We had a farm,” Mulan says wistfully. “I haven’t seen it in years.”

 

“Yes, you were quite the decorated heroine, weren’t you?” Marian and Mulan both blink at her, and Regina sighs. “I saw the Disney movie. Henry used to run around in the snow with a toy sword pretending to be you.” 

 

“Really?” Mulan looks gratified. “I haven’t seen it yet. Aurora bought a copy and insists that I see it with her, but I’ve been occupied with…well. Other matters.” 

 

She kneels down again, and Marian sees her shoulders drop, the delight faded with the thought of Aurora. “So Mulan gets a movie. Did you? Did I?” she asks, mostly to distract Mulan. She’s seen one clip of what Roland calls a movie on Robin’s phone, but it had been a sponge drawn with eyes and limbs and she’d been wholly unnerved by the concept.

 

Regina sniffs. “ _Snow_ got a movie. Your husband got a movie. At least I wasn’t an animated fox.” Which is an odd assurance. “I didn’t allow Snow White and the Seven Dwarvesin the house. Mulan was the favorite.” 

 

“Hm.” Mulan’s shoulders press inward. “No need to tell him what happened next.”

 

“What was that?” 

 

“I was…celebrated for a long time. A legend among my people. And then some of the generals thought I should stay at home and wait to be courted and married and a demure wife,” Mulan says wryly. “The emperor had other thoughts, but the other officers were uncomfortable with a woman as their leader, and I was reduced in rank to a common foot soldier until I grew dissatisfied and left the kingdom.”

 

Marian’s not surprised. “It took months of me riding with Robin before the Merry Men stopped complaining that I was slowing them down. I had to borrow Robin’s hood and perform in an archery competition opposite Little John before he stopped calling me 'Little Lady.’ He was humiliated.” Her memories are full of affection for the man now, but she can’t stop the little surge of smugness at the recollection of his wide-eyed face when she’d pulled off the hood.

 

“Is that why he was so relieved when I told him my weapon was a sword?” Mulan stifles a very audible snicker. “Men.” 

 

Regina hums in agreement. “I’ve found that a fireball is just as effective.” One emerges from her palm and makes it halfway to Marion before it fizzles out.

 

“It does seem so,” Mulan agrees, eyes wary on Regina. But Regina is smiling too, her eyes crinkled and half-closed like she’s telling a joke, and Marian watches the tentative smile as it emerges from Mulan’s lips. “Though I do have a sword that repels magic.” 

 

Regina’s eyes narrow. “Fire?”

 

“Let’s hope you never find out.” Mulan touches light fingers to the hilt of her weapon, and Regina laughs delightedly. Mulan looks affronted. “That was no joke. I’ve fought Cora, you know.” 

 

Regina stops moving. “I didn’t, actually.” They both wait, Marian patting down Roland’s dirt pile and Mulan’s fingers moving from her sword to her shoulder and then back again, but Regina says nothing more. 

 

They fall into silence again, though this one feels heavy with tension. Marian doesn’t know much about Cora in this world, other than that she is no longer here. She doesn’t know how to read the straight line of Regina’s back or the way her body bends inwards now as she touches a single sprout in the soil.

 

And then she says, so conversationally that Mulan is the one to go rigid, “How did you meet your husband, Marian? I don’t think I’ve heard that story.” Her question is laced with _something_ , a bitterness that doesn’t cut at Marian but feels designed to cut nevertheless. 

 

Mulan says, “Is this really necessary?” and Regina’s garden fork cracks a tine against the ground.

 

“No,” she says. “But please, tell us anyway.” 

 

“I…all right,” Marian says, discomfited. “I was a ward at Nottingham Forest for some time. We had some connections to the nobles who owned it, and my mother thought it would be good for me to learn the culture.”

 

“She wanted you to marry into them,” Regina deduces at once. 

 

It hadn’t been quite so bleak, though she wonders at how swiftly Regina had reached that assumption. “She wanted me to see if it was somewhere I’d want to spend the rest of my life. If I had refused Nottingham, another of my sisters would have gone and I’d have been warded elsewhere.” She wonders, in another life, if she’d have never met Robin and had been delivered to Prince Henry’s estate instead. Regina would have been long gone by then, married to a king triple her age, but she imagines that she’d have followed the rest of the family to the good King Leopold’s castle.

 

The king Regina had killed, if the rumors had been true, and she shivers and wonders about the girl she’d known before her marriage and the woman she’d seen after. “I was…I thought I was doing a passable job at fitting in. I was being courted by the sheriff of the area and we’d gone for a ride together that evening when our carriage was caught in the rain and collapsed. And then he was _vile_.” 

 

She remembers his insinuations that he’d be the only one in Nottingham who would ever deign to find her acceptable marriage material. The way he’d kept saying _Someone like you_ with his lips curled. She’d learned early in her time in Nottingham to stare blankly at those who’d talked to her like that, and they’d written her off as vapid but had been too delicate to say any more. “And then he called my mother some names I didn’t appreciate and made some spurious accusations about her and a royal friend of hers, and I slapped him several times.”

 

Mulan and Regina are both turned from their work now, and she flushes under their approving gazes and Roland’s curiosity. “Very ladylike,” Regina says. “A proper slap?” She cocks her head, side-side-side, like they’d always been taught in the courts. Express displeasure, stun the man for a moment, but leave no mark to humiliate him.

 

This is no court of proper ladies, though, a woodswoman and a witch and a warrior, and Marian has yet to meet one of the so-called 'proper ladies' she’d been taught to aspire to. “Very proper. He…not so proper.” He’d attacked her then and she’d fought back valiantly and with all the skills she’d ever learned, eventually grabbing his own knife from his holster and holding it to his neck until he’d stomped off, soaking wet in the rain. She’d been equally wet, her specially arranged hair flat against her head and her dress clinging to her skin, and then she’d looked up and seen a younger man crouched between two branches of a nearly tree.

 

She’d swallowed her surprise and demanded, _Were you planning on helping?_ and he’d offered her a winning grin and said, _You were magnificent. I didn’t want to get in the way_ , and he’d looked at her like she’d been his world in that moment and she’d… “I just wanted to get dry,” she admits, laughing. “I ran off with a strange man to his camp in the woods because he promised me fresh clothing. And he told me years later that he didn’t, that he’d run to town while I was drying off to buy me a dress. It was beautiful and expensive and designed for a child half my age.”

 

When she meets Regina’s eyes, it’s as though a shutter crashes down between them, turning her eyes dark and opaque. “It sounds like he loves you very much,” she says neutrally. Beside her, Mulan dips her head and there’s tension in the air again, created anew with the story Regina had asked for.

 

She knows there’s hostility between Robin and Regina and she’d have been better off avoiding it altogether, but Regina had _asked_ , and now she’s thinking of the man at home, the one worlds apart from the boy with the dress. The stranger she hardly knows. “He did,” she responds finally, and she doesn’t know what more can be said as Regina’s eyes shine through the mask for a moment, weary, too weary, and as lost as her own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all your wonderful feedback! I'm glad to know that you're all reading this. :) I'm a bit behind on replies but it's very late and I thought you'd want a chapter over replies to your comments tonight, lmao. But all are appreciated and you gave me a lot of food for thought! I wound up expanding on certain things and giving others more attention based on some of the points y'all brought up here and on Tumblr and I am very grateful. <3


	3. Chapter 3

Marian’s reluctant to go back to the woods too early most days.

 

It had seemed like a dream when she’d first seen Robin in Granny’s, like she’d finally escaped her death and found home again. She’d known she was in the future and hadn’t dared expect to see Robin again- or to find that he’d moved on, and she’d have no one at all. Her kingdom had escaped the curse entirely, perhaps one last loyalty from Regina to her father’s people, and she’d been alone in a sea of strangers. 

 

And then Robin had been there and all the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders. She hadn’t been alone, dependent only on Emma. She’d had her family back and her old idyll restored. 

 

And now she’s anxious around them, unsure of her relationship with Robin and what has been sustained beyond their child. She feels like she’s striving toward something impossible now when she’s around him, like she’s trying to be what he wants instead of trying to figure out what she wants for herself. And she knows it isn’t his fault, that he’d encourage her to be her own woman if he knew, but explaining it to him just seems like another wedge between them that she can’t bear.

 

So instead she trails around after Regina, Roland by her side, and she winds up in Regina’s house more often than not. There are more incidents with shattering glasses and magical earthquakes and, on one occasion, the piano in the living room shooting across the room and pinning her against the wall before Regina can push it back, but Regina is wary and alert around her at all times, cautious and prepared for anything.

 

“I’m sorry I’m underfoot all the time,” she says when she emerges from the shower in Regina’s guest room one evening. Henry had brought home a science project from school, a little flowerpot with newly planted seeds inside, and Regina had touched it and it had sprung to life, growing dozens of feet long and spreading vines that had wound around Marian and nearly strangled her to death before Regina had pried her free. “I can go back to camp if you’d prefer.” 

 

“I have no preference,” Regina says, turned to the stove. Henry is in the next room with Roland, playing video games, and Regina is preparing dinner for the rest of them. Marian takes her station at the cutting board with an avocado. “There’s no need to hide in a place where you’re apparently unhappy just so I won’t accidentally kill you.” There’s a stack of books in Regina’s office that they’ve been reading through after dinner, searching for a clue to how they can stop these accidental murder attempts, but with no luck. There are few discussions of successful time travel at all.

 

“I’m not…I never said I was unhappy,” she says defensively, thinking about how embarrassed Robin had been when they’d displayed a crack in their marriage in front of Regina. “I’m alive. I have my family. Isn’t that all I need?”

 

“Perhaps.” When she turns, Regina is watching her. It isn’t mocking or calculating or hostile, just thoughtful enough that she turns back to her avocado, head bent.

 

And there’s something peaceful about preparing dinner with another woman, even though Regina handing her the knife had almost ended with it stabbing her in the heart. She’s been living among the Merry Men for so long that she’s missed her sisters, missed her mother and their women guards and the cook. And now she can’t quite rid herself of the feeling of being the odd man out, even with Mulan in camp with her.

 

And so her guard is down, maybe enough that she admits to a woman who doesn’t give her more than curt nods and sparing words, “It’s different now. Everyone’s different. And I’m still…I’m the same person. I feel like a child among them.” 

 

Regina hesitates over her saucepan. “You are very young,” she allows. “But your husband is no bastion of maturity, either. He’s a father of a five-year-old, so yes, he’s protective, but I’ve also seen him hiding in a wardrobe in my castle and jumping out to terrify Roland whenever he’d walk past.” There’s a sadness in her voice that she can’t quite conceal, and Marian wonders at it. She knows Regina and Henry had been separated for a year, and she can’t imagine what it must have been like to see Roland with his father during that time, a constant reminder of what Regina had lost.

 

“They were living in your castle?” 

 

“Everyone was living in my castle,” Regina is quick to correct her. “It was the safest place to defend ourselves against Zelena, and the woods are no place for a child. I didn’t exactly want any company, but Snow is…persuasive. Like a hornet whining in my ears.”

 

“I was surprised to see her here,” she says, and maybe it’s too personal because Regina flinches and doesn’t glance back at her.

 

When she finally speaks again, it’s strained. “We have made peace, I suppose. It must be unwelcome for those caught in the crossfire between us.” 

 

“No, I…uh…” She hadn’t actually been imprisoned because of Snow White, even if it had been what she’d claimed. It may have even been the reason why Emma had decided to save her. And she sees the way both women are so _happy_ around each other now. She’s had enough of isolation to not wish it on anyone else, even in vengeance. “I’m sure everyone’s pleased that that war is over.”

 

Regina laughs. “No, most think that I was too easily forgiven, that Snow’s soft spot for me is the only reason why I’m not languishing in a dungeon somewhere or burning at a stake.” She frowns for a moment, as though a memory that doesn’t quite fit is suddenly floating up again, and Marian knows which immediately. “I’m no stranger to being loathed. I’ll survive.”

 

She watches the lift of Regina’s chin from behind, and it’s as though she’s ten again and marveling at Regina’s courage once more. And when Regina turns back to her, there’s an odd look on her face as she regards her, as though she’s suddenly seeing that girl for the first time, too.

 

* * *

 

As she walks home that evening, she sees someone just outside the town market, the door oddly frosted over in the warmth of spring. She moves a little closer and there’s a flash of white and blue, a figure bolting through the door with a full shopping basket in one hand. 

 

“Excuse me?” she starts, and then there’s another flash of white, a spark that nearly hits her directly. She ducks away (and it’s freeing to be able to _move_ when she’s being attacked) and dodges the blow, only to stare in disbelief as the wall the creature hits instead shuddering under what looks like an enormous icicle. 

 

She turns back toward it, but it's already gone.

 

* * *

 

At night she lies beside Robin, watching him as he sleeps. He’s still much the same from the last time she’d seen him before she’d gone, his beard the same length (if a bit lighter) and his build just a bit more impressive. She can’t see him climbing trees and hanging out of windows anymore- though according to Regina, he’s at least hiding in wardrobes still. 

 

It’s his eyes that have changed the most. They’re still soft when they look at her, but distant and heavy and aged all the time, as though the years without her come back each time she’s in the room. As though there are still secrets between them she knows he won’t tell. But with his eyes closed, he’s still the man she’d loved, reassuring and close and _family_ in all the ways he’d been before.

 

She feels guilty for it, for being happiest when he isn’t quite there, and she rises and pulls a shawl around herself before she steps out of their room in their cabin. It’s a small three-room building, with a large bedroom and a smaller one for Roland and a single couch. Their cooking and eating is still done communally but she knows Robin had purchased a sack of clementines just days ago and it’s still sitting on the table in front of the couch. She feels her way through the room in the dark, finding the clementines and sitting down on the couch.

 

“Hi, Mama,” says a voice from right beside her, and she jumps.

 

“Roland!” Her eyes are beginning to adjust to the dark and she can see him now, hunched over on the couch with a clementine of his own. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

 

“I was hungry.” He chews and swallows, methodical about it, and when she looks down she can see that he has arranged his peel into a long line of orange pieces. Methodical, indeed. “Why are you awake?” 

 

“I was hungry,” she says, smiling down at him. She slides her nail into the skin of the fruit, carefully peeling it so the skin comes off in one curling piece. Roland’s eyes round. “Do you want me to show you how to do this?”

 

“Yes, Mama!” He bounces a little and it’s probably too late for him to be awake and so excited, but she can’t find it in herself to care too much. Not when Roland is bright-eyed and fascinated by the movement of her hands, when he’s struggling to do the same thing and she can see how he’s already picked up his parents’ dexterity at such a young age. He feels like her son today, like a little carbon copy of how she’d been at his age, and they work at the clementines with happy little noises.

 

They peel too many of them to eat, and Roland curls up beside her, his hands sticky with fruit juice. “I can peel apples with a knife,” he informs her proudly. “Little John showed me.” 

 

Her eyebrows shoot up. “He let you use a _knife_?”

 

Roland bobs his head. “He’s my best friend. Except Mulan. She let me hold her sword but I was too little to pick it up. And Regina,” he adds as an afterthought. “I like Regina best.”

 

She isn’t surprised, from the way he runs to the former queen when they see her and how happy he is around Henry. And there’s a full year Regina had spent with him that Marian had missed, and she bites back her jealousy and asks, “Did you play with her in her castle?” 

 

“Sometimes.” Roland chews thoughtfully. “Papa said she was too sad to play then. But we got ice cream in Storybrooke. Papa wanted to hold her hand but she let me instead.” He beams proudly, missing the way her eyes widen.

 

“Papa…wanted to hold her hand?” she repeats, cautious as her hands clench around her shawl.

 

“Uh huh.” 

 

She can feel her heart stop, feel her breath catch in her throat, and she feels like an idiot for never thinking of it before. For it never occurring to her just what it is that has Robin so angry, that has Regina so distant and sad. For the way she’d shrugged off the secrets she’d known were being kept from her because she hadn’t wanted to be an inconvenience and hadn’t wanted to _suspect_ , to consider anything close to the truth.

 

An _inconvenience_. And she’d slipped right into a role that Regina had been filling. Roland’s _favorite_. The woman who would have murdered her. The woman appointed as her protector. Robin had moved on from her after all and she’d never known it, never known that she’d been an outsider even within her own family. Robin is trying desperately to hate a woman he may very well have loved.

 

She still hasn’t let out her breath, hasn’t dared say anything more to Roland. She can’t imagine going back into that bedroom again to face Robin, but she manages to kiss Roland on the cheek and take faltering steps toward the wardrobe just inside the doorway of the room she’d shared with Robin. 

 

Regina wouldn’t have slept in a cabin like this, not when she had that palatial mansion with all of Henry’s old toys for Roland. Regina, who’s so much closer in age to Robin and who has a son as well, a brother for Roland and a queen for Robin. Regina who is _perfect_ , who transformed from her dark past is a woman more than suited to Robin. 

 

She needs to be away. She can't bear to stay in this home where she's never belonged while Roland eats clementines and talks about Regina and Robin is...(who knows what Robin is dreaming of right now?)

 

She walks from the encampment with the phone in hand, and only when she reaches the edge of the woods does she remember why she needs it. And she laughs and laughs until she's close to tears and presses down hard on the images of letters on the screen. 

 

 _Heading to Emma's apartment_ , she reports to her savior, to the woman whose life she'd stolen just weeks after Regina had done the same to her, and she hits the send button before she can write anything more. 

 

* * *

 

Emma opens the door after a full minute of banging. "What the hell, Marian? Is everything okay?"

 

She stands straight, firm and determined. "Tell me about Robin and Regina," she says, and Emma's eyes widen and her head drops an instant later. 

 

"Oh, _fuck_.”

 

* * *

 

She doesn’t want to go home after. She stands in the doorway of Emma’s apartment for a full minute, fidgeting from side to side, and Emma takes her hand and says, “The kid’s in his room tonight, but you can take my bed.” 

 

“Oh, I…I couldn’t.” 

 

Emma’s eyes are kind, and she thinks she might be grateful if she weren’t so staggered still. She feels unsteady on her feet, lost like a string unraveled so far from its source that nothing can pull it back. “Take it,” Emma says. “I fall asleep on the couch half the time, anyway.” She shrugs, and Marian notices the dark spots under her eyes for the first time.

 

She hesitates. “Emma…is Regina so angry at you because of me? Because you saved me?”

 

“No. Yeah. It’s…it’s complicated.” Emma runs her fingers through her hair, pulling it away from her face. “I think we were just kind of in a good place and then I dropped an anvil on…you know. The whole soulmates thing.” 

 

“And I’m the anvil.” 

 

“God, Marian, not like that.” Emma’s fingers catch on a knot in her hair and she winces. “I don’t regret saving you. You have every right to be here, and she would have _executed_ you. It’s some kind of terrible irony, I guess, and she’s just going to have to deal with it.” She shrugs, letting her hands fall from her hair. “If she has to be angry with someone over it, better me than you. I’m the one who screwed things up. You were just an innocent bystander.”

 

She doesn’t feel any better about it now. Rationally she knows it’s because it’s never a good idea to be on the bad side of a witch capable of great evil, but there’s a piece of her dwelling on Regina, standing at her stove and laughing to her, and she bites down on her lip and nods.

 

* * *

 

She wakes up coughing, smoke heavy around her, and long-honed skills spring to mind immediately. _Window. Find a window_. She’s a woman of the forest, accustomed to the fear that that ominous crackling can bring, and she surges forward to heave open the window beside Emma’s bed.

 

 _Emma. Henry_. She can climb out of the room now, the ground-floor apartment easy to escape, but all she can hear is the faint whisper of smoke as it fills the rooms and a distant crackle like paper being crumpled. “Emma!” she shouts, throwing open the door. 

 

More smoke explodes at her, pouring into her doorway and obscuring her vision, and she can just barely see the ratty green couch that Emma’s supposed to be asleep on. “Henry?” she coughs, feeling her way toward his door. The doorknob is cool and she turns it, letting in a new wave of smoke. 

 

Henry’s silhouette sits up in bed. “Marian?” he says, puzzled. “What’s going on?” 

 

The sound of fire abruptly vanishes, and the front door is slammed open. A large figure- one she recognizes with relief before she recalls the night before- is brandishing some sort of long jug that releases white foam everywhere, dousing the room as the smoke begins to fizzle out the windows. Henry- intuitive as any child of Regina’s would be- pushes at his own window, pressing his mouth to the grate as he breathes. 

 

Then a frantic voice, high like it’s never been before. “ _Henry! Emma!_ ” Regina shoves past Robin, running to the room where they’re still standing, and she wraps her arms tight around Henry as he blinks up at her. She’s shaking and shrill and her arms aren’t quite moving right but her eyes are wild and she pats at Henry’s back and her elbows bend inward, clumsy as they hang around him.

 

“Mom. I’m okay. I’m okay,” Henry says, again and again, but his arms tighten around her, his face buried in her neck as she holds him close. 

 

And then Marian is being encircled, too, Robin kissing the top of her head and murmuring at her. “You disappeared last night. I was frantic. Regina said you’d be here but there was a…another of her attacks…we didn’t see until the lower level was up in flames. Are you all right?” 

 

There’s a bitter taste in her mouth from last night, memories of Emma’s revelation returning in full force, and she pulls away, feeling unclean. “I’m fine.”

 

“Emma.” Regina pulls out of Henry’s grasp, eyes wide. “Where is Emma?” She runs back to the living room like it’s still on fire, dropping to sit on the couch beside Emma. Emma is lying prone on it, face dirty from smoke and unmoving. “Emma!” Regina shakes her, frantic and heaving. “Emma, get up this instant!”

 

She’s a stranger now, panicked in a way that Marian’s only seen her around her son before, nothing like the woman who sits opposite Emma at Granny’s and offers only curt barbs her way. Emma can insist that Regina hates her now but there’s no sign of it in this moment, Regina bent over Emma, hissing angry demands into her ears as she shakes her by the shoulders, and none when Emma’s eyes flicker open and she stares up in confusion. “Regina? Why are you in my house?” 

 

“You _idiot_!” Regina snarls, hugging her close and letting her go so swiftly that Emma bangs her head against the back of the couch, and she stands straight and and stalks back to a protected position behind Henry. Emma sits up, looking bemused. “You can’t sleep through a fire! My son was in your apartment! You could have died!” 

 

“Our son,” Emma corrects, rubbing her head. “How did this happen? What was–“ Her eyes land back on Regina accusingly. “You did this.”

 

“She didn’t mean to,” Robin says automatically. His face freezes an instant later and Marian takes a second step back from him, closer to the window where she can breathe easily. Robin watches her but says nothing.

 

Regina speaks again, her voice strained and her hands settling on Henry’s shoulders. “We only realized that I’d done it once he couldn’t move.” She nods to Robin and doesn’t quite look at him, doesn’t say his name, and Marian’s heart constricts again. “This is worse than before. There was never any risk of collateral damage before now.”

 

“Collateral damage?” Robin repeats incredulously. “That’s what you’re calling it? Your son, his mother, my wife…” He reaches for her again and she angles closer to the window instead, apparent enough that Emma toys with the string on her pants and Robin’s brow furrows. “Marian?” 

 

She looks away, to Regina and Henry where they’re murmuring to each other, and Regina says coolly, “This _is_ a consideration. Until now, there had been no risk for Marian at home. But the pressure to end this is intensifying and I won’t have anyone else in her path being hurt because of it.” She cocks her head, eyes narrowing. “Roland, for instance.” 

 

“Oh,” Marian breathes, and Robin is still glaring, hard and focused. But now that she _knows_ , she can see the pain in his eyes, the hesitation when he looks away from Regina. She sinks onto the bed, feeling as though the world is dropping out from under her. “What do you think we should do, Regina?” 

 

“I suppose you’ll have to stay with me.” Regina doesn’t sound thrilled about it. Robin shakes his head.

 

Marian doesn’t know if she’s relieved or disappointed, if moving from Robin to Regina is all that different. Robin who’s been keeping things from her, who has a soulmate who isn’t her. Regina who’s been volatile and has every reason to want her dead, even if they’re actively trying to keep her alive now. “Yes,” she says, the same reluctance in her voice. “I suppose so.” 

 

They’re moving around the room now, all of them in shaky orbits of each other. Regina is phoning the hospital and Robin sits beside Emma and murmurs to her as she rubs her head again. “Yeah,” she says, just loud enough for Marian to hear. “We’re all fine. I think Regina tried to kill _me_ this time, but that’s nothing new.” 

 

She coughs hard and Regina is sitting on her other side in a flash, fingers pressed to her throat. “Breathe,” she orders. “How much smoke did you inhale?”

 

“I don’t know, I was asleep!”

 

“How the hell do you sleep through that?” Regina demands, her nails scraping against Emma’s neck. Emma coughs again. “Were you drinking?”

 

“What? No, I wasn’t drinking!” Emma scowls at her. “I had Henry tonight! I wouldn’t…” She rubs her head again, slumping back, and Regina sighs and rubs the backs of her fingers against Emma’s temples. Emma exhales, eyes closing under the pressure. “I just don’t sleep much anymore. I guess it all caught up with me.”

 

Regina glares at her. Marian leans back against a counter, Henry rolling his eyes beside her. “That’s unacceptable.” 

 

“Thanks for caring, Regina.” Emma’s head lolls to the side, nearly on Regina’s shoulder, and Regina softens just like that. Her eyes gentle and her fingers slide over Emma’s and she’s so focused on Emma that she doesn’t see what Marian does from across the room. She doesn’t see Robin watching her, his eyes pained and uncertain as he sits on their other side, but Marian does.

 

Marian shivers in the smoky apartment and Henry moves a little closer to her, his arms folded almost challengingly as he glares at Robin, and Robin exhales, rough and ragged. Their eyes meet and nothing is said with their gazes. Once she could have signaled to him an incoming army by direction and time remaining with only a shift in her eyes, but today there’s nothing but blankness in their eyes, nothing but a gulf widening ever more. _There is no cavalry today,_ she doesn’t say, but it feels like horses beating out fury against her insides regardless.

 

* * *

 

Robin and Emma have disappeared into the woods to look at newly frozen trees and Regina hovers in the back of the cabin, an arm around Henry’s waist as she holds him tight. They’re both as somber-faced as they’d been since the stop at the hospital on the way here, inseparable and uncomfortable in this cabin. With a family that might have been theirs, Marian thinks, and stares back down at her unpacked bag. 

 

“Here,” Mulan murmurs, passing her her crossbow in its canvas bag, and she puts it down on her bed beside her clothing. “Are you sure this is what you want?” 

 

“I don’t really have a choice, do I?” It’s sharp and bitter and she flushes. “I’m sorry, Mulan. I’m just…” 

 

“Frustrated,” Mulan finishes.

 

And Mulan had been her friend, someone she’d trusted, and she’s suddenly angry. “You knew. You know about Robin and…” She glances toward Regina in the doorway and the other woman meets her gaze silently. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t anyone tell me? I was walking around like a fool believing that…that my husband hadn’t…” She chokes on her own breath and Roland scampers to her from where he’s been watching them on the bed, touching her cheek tentatively. She kisses his hand, presses her lips to the top of his curly little head and tries to hold back her frustration.

 

Mulan rubs her eyes. “I would have told you. I thought…it seemed dishonorable to hide this from you. But not yet. Not while you were still coming to terms with this world.”

 

“Not while I’m still about to die, you mean.” She shoves her small pile of clothing into the bag. “When they can pick up the pieces once I’m gone and start up all over again.” She stares at the two little bags on the bed. This is it. This is all the impact she’s left on this world. Clothing and a crossbow. 

 

“I have to go,” she says abruptly, and stalks from the cabin with the rest of its occupants trailing behind her.

 

* * *

 

She sits on the porch outside of Regina’s house the next evening, reluctant to go inside to the noise of _family_ , Regina and Henry and even Emma stretched out in Regina’s living room and halfway cordial. Which means sniping for the sake of sniping and Regina hostile but unable to keep herself from checking on Emma’s cough every few minutes and Henry sitting between them, sighing heavily.

 

They’re a family, fractured as they are, and Marian doesn’t belong. Not with them, not with her own family, and she thinks about Roland peeling clementines beside her and bends her head to her knees, wetness dripping from her eyes to darken her pants- _leggings_ , Regina had corrected, and frowned at Emma for suggesting just them- from grey to black.

 

She doesn’t want to think about Robin and Regina anymore, doesn’t want to look at the woman who’s taken her life away and is struggling to give it back now that it’s too late. Doesn’t want to think about what _should_ be happening and what’s destined for them. Doesn’t want to consider the image of the three of them walking together, Roland and Regina holding hands as Robin smiles on. Regina, slotting neatly into her place.

 

And she _knows_ , she knows that this can’t go on forever. That there’s been not a single clue in any of the books they’ve pored through, that the Dark One has no answers for them, that there really is no answer. All she’s doing is torturing herself and everyone around her, forcing them to acknowledge her presence as an obstacle to their happiness and nothing more. 

 

She wonders if Regina smiles around Robin, if she’d been as soft and loving with him as she had her son. She wonders how quickly Robin will forgive her for executing Marian, now that it’s against her will.

 

She wonders…

 

“Marian.” She knows the voice, formal as it is, and she’s startled when Regina comes to sit beside her, tugging her short dress down to cover her thighs. “You should come inside. It isn’t safe for you to be so far away.” Regina doesn’t touch her, not like Emma, who’s so tactile that her first instinct when anyone is suffering is to reach for them. Regina sits as tightly as Marian, the two of them compressed into their tiny spaces where they are alone even in the openness of the night.

 

She's silent for a while, watching as a few sparse snowflakes scatter in the wind, and Regina sits in silence beside her. “How do you do it?” she says finally.

 

“Do what?” 

 

“Sit next to me like this. Knowing that I shouldn’t be here. That I’m the reason you’re not with your…with your soulmate.”

 

Regina startles visibly. She reins herself in a moment later, too composed by years of royal training to act with anything less than perfect poise. “Ah. I see.” She drums her fingers against her bare knee. “I had my first love return from the dead, too, you know.”

 

She blinks. “You…what happened?” She hadn’t known this, hadn’t even imagined the Evil Queen with any love at all. It’s easier to imagine on Regina as she is now, Regina who can’t quite look at Robin or Regina who (yes, Regina who) softens when she watches Emma without being seen. But before this, Regina had been cold and dark and cruel and she wonders what first love could have looked like on the Evil Queen. “Who was he?” 

 

“Only a stable boy.” But Regina is smiling, the same distant softness in her eyes now. “Before I was forced to be a queen. And when he returned, it was here, and he pleaded with me to kill him.” She turns, intent on Marian. “He wasn’t whole, he was suffering, and I…” She trembles, just the barest shiver in the cold air, and Marian knows how this story ends. 

 

Regina laughs, a hitch in her voice as she does. “Sometimes I wonder if soulmates only means parallel lives. If we’re just going through the same stories, living them out, and we happened to intersect only by mutual understanding.” 

 

Marian huddles in closer, tucking her hands under her knees. “Are you in love with him?” she whispers, and they both know she isn’t talking about the stable boy.

 

“No,” Regina says immediately. “I don’t know how much Emma has told you- it was Emma, wasn’t it?” Marian nods. “But we’d only started seeing each other a bit before you came back.” 

 

But they’re still _soulmates_ , still _destined_ , still with this bond that Marian can’t touch, and they move around each other like satellites. Never touching. Always orbiting. “Then why–“ 

 

“He was a good man,” Regina says simply. “Good men have never wanted me as I am.”

 

She feels compassion burning at the back of her throat and it’s _absurd_. Regina is who she’d made herself to be, and she’d sat in a cell in a dungeon and hated her. She’d been mocked and dragged through the dirt and begged for her life and all because of the woman beside her, and sympathy is nothing that Regina deserves.

 

She forces words out, bitter and hateful as they can be summoned. “And you believe you deserve love? That you deserve someone good after all you’ve done?” 

 

Regina is silent, and Marian surges forward. “I’m certain…it’s only a matter of time before I’m gone. Before you can both have each other. And when he goes back to you- and he will, won’t he? Isn’t he destined to be your true love?- when you have my husband and my son and Robin decides that he’s going to forgive you for murdering me, he will deserve you. You’ll deserve each other.” She’s angry. She has to be angry, because if she isn’t angry she might weep in front of Regina, might fall into frustrations and helplessness and the knowledge that she’s only a bump in the road for someone else’s fairytale. “You deserve–“ 

 

Saltwater slides over her eyes, leaving only blurry shapes before her, and she heaves a single sob before she’s folding back into herself, shaking with the force of her tears, and she feels tiny and useless and ephemeral under Regina’s gaze. She can’t think about Robin because it tugs little strings of energy from her heart, tearing her apart from the inside as fiercely as thoughts of Roland. She could flit away in the wind and they would all be relieved that she was gone, and she sobs and sobs and sobs until there’s an awkward hand against her back, hovering and settling down and hovering again.

 

She doesn’t have the energy to pull away and the comfort offered is tempting, so tempting, like a girl riding bareback through King Xavier’s forest- _If they laugh, you just do better. Until they stop laughing_ \- and the gentleness in her eyes, gone and returned again. She slips to her side so quickly that there’s a faint “oof!” as Regina catches her, as she slides tentative arms around her as though she’s Henry, as though she’s a sister or a child or someone worth protecting. 

 

She tucks her face into Regina’s shoulder and Regina tightens her grip around her and Marian feels as though she has a center for the first time since she’d come to this land. As though, for an instant, there is someone who understands her, who knows about not belonging and love twisted into something that should be dead. And there is nothing she need offer in return.

 

A tree branch cracks loudly above them and Marian doesn’t know if she can’t move or if she won’t. If this is another moment that might be her death. But she can feel Regina shift to look up, feels a hand leave her back for just a moment, and instead of the force of the branch crashing onto them, there’s only a soft mist of newly fallen dew. 

 

* * *

 

She lies awake in the guest room and listens to soft murmurs from the hall. “So you’re sleeping on my couch again?”

 

“Yeah. If you don’t kick me out.” Emma sounds challenging, on the offensive, and Marian almost smiles at her tone. Regina doesn't back down, Emma doesn't stop provoking, and it's how they communicate, comfortable and tense all at once. “Or I can go back to the apartment you almost burned down, but I think my landlord is having second thoughts on me as a tenant after he had to send in a cleaning service yesterday.”  

 

“Gold is your landlord.” 

 

“I know. He’s kind of an ass, remember?” She laughs lowly and Marian already knows what happens now, Regina caught between a glower and softness that creeps up and threatens to overwhelm her face. Emma hopeful and trying not to show it, happiness as evasive for them as it is for her, if only because of the way they skitter back as quickly as they do forward.

 

And then Regina speaks up and Marian’s heart pangs in her chest at her words. “I know Robin sent you here to keep an eye on her.” 

 

A sigh. “Regina.” Nothing from Regina, just the low tapping of shoes on varnished wood, and Emma says, “Yeah. He asked me to. That’s not why I’m here.” 

 

“Why are you here, then? To sleep on my couch and eat my food and take away even this time I have with my son?” Regina demands. “Haven’t you intruded enough?”

 

“I’m here because you’ve been- _off_ , Regina.” Emma sounds exasperated. “You lost your sister and you lost your soulmate and you’re being forced to be someone else’s death sentence and you haven’t done anything and I’m worried that you’re going to have a breakdown one of these days, okay? I’m just looking out for you.” 

 

The tapping on the floor quickens, reaching agitated speeds. “Oh, so you’re here to make sure I don’t start killing people again?” Regina sneers, and the hurt is palpable in her voice. “The savior who can’t save anyone anymore, making it her personal business to protect Storybrooke from me?”

 

Emma is breathing hard, loud enough to hear from the crack of Marian’s door. “Fine. If that’s what you want to believe…fine. That’s why I’m here.” Her footsteps are usually softer than Regina’s, careless and uneven like the vocals to Regina’s perfect beat, but now they’re banging vibrations against the floor, stomping toward the steps downstairs.

 

“Emma,” Regina says, and Emma stops. “You don’t need to sleep on a couch to protect anyone here. You can go home if you want to.” Her voice is soft again. They rock back and forth like this dozens of times a day and Marian’s never sure how it’s going to end, in fury or with secret smiles or something else entirely.

 

“I don’t,” Emma mumbles. “Want to.” Her feet shift, squeaking against the floor, and Marian can visualize her shuffling back and forth. “Okay?”

 

“Okay,” Regina echoes in a murmur, and she stands in place, half-obscured by Marian’s door for a long time after Emma clomps her way down to the living room.


	4. Chapter 4

They walk to Regina’s work together in the morning. Emma and Henry dash out a few minutes earlier, Emma driving her little yellow car to Henry’s school while Regina finishes up in the kitchen. She’s tightlipped around them all now (except Henry, who gets a kiss and a pleasant goodbye) and Marian thinks that the night before had been too vulnerable for all of them. 

 

Except then when they’re halfway to Town Hall, Marian’s hair tied back and wisps of it coming free in the wind, and Regina says, “When I saw Daniel again, it was like…like everything that had happened between then and now had vanished. As though I was just a girl again, just in love, and it was all I had to be. I’m sure Robin felt the same way when he saw you.” Her jaw is tense as she speaks, hands opening and closing against the pockets of her coat as though she’s halfway ready to stop herself from reassurances. 

 

Marian breathes out a sigh. “But we’re not the people we remember. We’re not…the joy wore off quickly and now I fear we’ll only disappoint each other.” She kicks a rock on the pavement and Regina’s foot lands on it, sending it flying directly at Marian’s eyes before Regina snatches it from the air. “Perhaps it is over, after all. Perhaps it’s time I stopped standing between you two.” 

 

“Perhaps you stopped being a fool,” Regina retorts acerbically, walking on. “There is nothing unmanageable in your relationship. Robin loves you more than ever, and you still love him, don’t you?” She crosses the street to the sheriff’s station, high heels pounding the cement as she pounds out words that are as much a comfort as Regina will offer her, and she spins around to face Marian as Marian reaches the sidewalk. “I won’t have you force me to into your relationship's death knell. I have no interest–“ She takes in a deep breath, lines stretching across her face. “I won’t destroy your family’s happiness ever again.” 

 

Marian opens her mouth- to say what, she doesn’t know- but Regina cuts her off before she can speak. “Work at it. Iron it out. See who you are together before you play the martyr.” She narrows her eyes at Marian, no malice but impatience with idiocy, and Marian flushes and looks away. “And for the love of god, stop acting as though you’re already dead.” 

 

She stalks into the sheriff’s station, Marian trailing behind, and barks out, “Emma!” 

 

Emma looks up from where she’s carefully balancing unsharpened pencils on the tips of her fingers. “Oh, good, have you talked to her about it?”

 

“Talked about what?” She’s bewildered, still off-balance from their conversation outside, and Regina is looking at her expectantly. “Why are we here?”

 

“You’re going to be the new liaison between the Merry Men and the sheriff’s station,” Regina says abruptly. “They’re our new backup team during crises and we'll need you to be on top of that. You’ll be working equally with Emma and Robin. I hope that’s all right.”

 

“I…why are you…” She shakes her head, unsure of the questions she’s supposed to be asking, and she’s interrupted by the click of the door. Regina has departed as swiftly as she’d come, and only a shimmer of magic repairing the glass door outside Emma’s office as it shatters at Marian is any sign that she’d looked back. “What just happened?” 

 

Emma fiddles with a pencil, smiling to herself. “You were just assigned a job.”

 

“But I’m not– I can’t keep a job. I’m not going to–“ 

 

“Uh-uh.” Emma drops the pencil and opens the bakery plastic container in front of her. "Trust me, it’s not worth it to fight Regina on these things. Guess you’d better live. Bearclaw?” She holds out a pastry, a subtle smile still playing at her lips, and Marian blinks at it. 

 

The flippant remark before it doesn’t register until she’s sitting in the seat Emma gestures at, and her eyes go wide. _Guess you’d better live._ It’s a gauntlet she hadn’t expected. It’s _roots_ , something more tangible than the family she’s clutching at, responsibility and new ground firming beneath her feet.

 

It’s no magic cure, nothing that can undo the fact that she’s going to die. But it’s a promise of something permanent anyway, a place where she belongs. _For the love of god, stop acting as though you’re already dead_. 

 

Emma watches her as she reels, hand still extended with the bearclaw, and Marian retrieves it and takes a bite.

 

* * *

 

Robin is inspecting a frozen tree with Mulan and Little John when Roland spots her. “Mama!” he calls, stumbling through the underbrush to her.

 

She catches him, lifting him into her arms. She still marvels at how heavy he is, how he’s been transforms from a little bright-eyed bundle to this human being with needs and desires of his own, who snuggles into her as though he’d missed her. “Roland,” she murmurs, kissing his brow. 

 

She’d seen him only briefly while she’d packed up her clothing- had felt guilty asking any more of Robin when she’d been avoiding his touch and itching to run back to the woman who’d nearly killed her rather than look him in the eye- and now she holds him tight, squeezing her eyes closed and feeling stubby little arms wrap around her neck. “Roland,” she breathes.

 

When she opens her eyes, Robin is leaning against the tree, watching her with eyes that _hurt_ , that are pained and confused and lost, and she suddenly wonders if there really is anything to talk about when it comes to pixie dust and soulmates and people who aren’t here. 

 

(“If he’d come back,” she’d asked the night before, after Regina had brought her upstairs to her room. “Your stable boy. If he’d come back instead of me, what would you have done?” Regina hadn’t answered, just given her a look that had said clearly that she would do well to dwell less on hypotheticals.)

 

She’s here and she doesn’t doubt that he still loves her, even if they aren’t quite on the same wavelength. Even if there’s someone else out there for him, someone more suitable who she can’t quite hate as she should. _See who you are together_ , Regina says, and she closes her eyes again, forces down the dread and fear and remembers–

 

* * *

 

–Robin, climbing up to her window when she’d been a ward in Nottingham. “Maid Marian!” he’d managed to call before he’d caught his foot on her ledge and gone toppling backward, banging hard against the balcony one floor down. 

 

She’d jumped up from her sitting table and run to the window, forgetting that she’d only been in her nightgown and nothing else. “Robin?” He’d been sprawled out on the stones below and still managed to offer her his most charming smirk. It’s hardly charming- just a fool, being foolish, she’d reminded herself- and she'd demanded, “Are you mad? What are you doing here?” 

 

“I brought you a gift.” He'd fumbled in his satchel and then brandished a familiar necklace at her. 

 

She'd laughed down at him, tucking her hair behind her ears as it falls forward. “That’s mine. You stole it from me.” 

 

“Ah, but did it come with a matching ring?” He'd procured a box out of nowhere, tossing it up to her as she’d caught it with both hands, as easily as he’d thrown it. She’d opened it and gasped. “Robin!”

 

It had been delicate and simple, a ring with a circle of diamonds nearly flat against the band. Later, she’d find out how much time and work he’d spent obtaining it, how he’d refused to steal for it but had labored to earn the money to have it specially made. It had been designed for a rider, for an archer, for a woman bandit; and she’d known that looking at it and known immediately what it had signified. 

 

A promise. Not a commitment, not yet, but a promise of a future together. And she’d stood stock-still, staring openmouthed at the ring until Robin had climbed back up and perched on the windowsill. She’d looked up again and seen him gazing- not at her hand but her face- and her heart had felt so light and she’d met his eyes as she’d slid it onto her finger.

 

She’d moved forward to kiss him (and he’d fallen off the windowsill again midway through it, but that no longer matters) and she’d thought, in that moment, that this had been her fairytale–

 

* * *

 

–and it still is. It still can be. She opens her eyes again, feeling that same love bubbling up, and it may have been five years but his foolish smile is the same and his eyes are so warm and she can feel her lips press together and curve upward, unbidden. And there's an itching in her eyes that she can’t explain and Mulan is glancing from her to Robin with understanding and then Roland is being gently tugged from her arms and Robin is moving toward her as the others leave the clearing, and she’s walking back toward him with unsteady steps. And they meet at the frozen tree. 

 

“Hello,” she whispers, and tears spring to her eyes. 

 

He remains still, but she can see the way his gaze shifts to follow her, the way he halts his breathing when she takes his hands in hers and the way his thumb traces the circle of diamonds on her ring finger. And this is who they are, legendary bandits who ride in tandem through the woods and hold hands and laugh together as they flee castles.

 

“Do you love me?” she asks him, and he’s still gazing at her face and not her hand. And he must see something written across it, or perhaps an image- of pixie dust and soulmates and a woman she can’t seem to hate.

 

His eyes darken and he shakes his head slightly; and she waits. 

 

“More than anything in the universe,” he murmurs, and he’s older but he’s still _Robin_ , unmistakably, if she only allows herself to believe it. She doesn’t…she thinks she might. With time. With hope.

 

He raises her fingers to his lips and she raises her eyes to the sky and says, “Oh. Well, I love you. I love you.” The words are uncertain as they’ve never been before, and she repeats them, again and again and again though they never gain strength and he’s echoing her and they paint a pattern of _I love you_ into the sky and the woods and the gleam of moonlight against an ice-encrusted tree.

 

* * *

 

She slips into the mansion that evening after a brief texted warning. She'd spent most of the afternoon with Robin and Roland- which, technically, is still her job, Emma had reminded her when she'd apologized. They'd followed a trail of frozen undergrowth that had petered out not far from the outskirts of town and _talked_ , tentative as though they'd only just met (when they'd first met, there had been nothing tentative about it).

 

And this world is beginning to feel like it might be _right_ , alien and constricting as it is. She's beginning to see a future here that isn't just prolonging death, a life that includes friends and family and a purpose, and she's terrified to dream any more. 

 

She's relieved when she walks into the living room and only Henry is there, frowning over his mother's paperwork with a pencil. Being around Regina is complicated now. There's guilt and anger and a craving for something she can't place, and she just- she wants to imagine happiness today, nothing more complex required. 

 

"Hi." Henry underlines something carefully and then blinks up at her, grinning. “They’re in the dining room playing chess.” He lowers his voice. “They’re _terrible_ at chess. My mom hasn’t beaten me since I was eight.” 

 

“Why are they playing, then? I can’t imagine Regina would willingly lose to anyone but you.” She hears a thump from across the foyer, a low growl followed by the sound of exultation. 

 

Henry shrugs. “Because I took it out. And got them to play.” At her raised eyebrows, he sighs. “They’ve been all weird again lately and I don’t like it. I just want things to be good again, but Mom’s so angry about…stuff.” 

 

He chews on his lip, and she says, “Because Emma brought me back.” 

 

“I guess. I mean, I think Mom likes you and she’s definitely working on keeping you alive, so I don’t know why she’d be holding a grudge?” His voice rises in a question and he blinks down, eyes shifty. “But she’s kind of super at holding grudges. She cursed everyone here once because she was mad at Snow White.” He flips through his papers again. “I don’t want her mad at Emma like that.”

 

“I don’t think she will be.” It’s a hunch built around the stillness of Regina the night before, gazing after Emma with her whole body angled after her and something close to longing in her eyes. “And Emma’s been on her best behavior, hasn’t she?” 

 

Henry opens his mouth to respond, but then Emma’s voice cuts into their conversation, loud and smug as she crows, “Ha! What are you going to do without your queen, _Your Majesty_?”

 

“Maybe not _best_ behavior,” Marian amends.

 

Henry grins. “No, this is really good for her. I have the worst moms.” But he’s smiling when he says it, eyes bright and proud, and she can only dream that someday Roland might have that much love in his eyes when he thinks of her and Robin.

 

“I don’t need a queen to crush you, you imbecile,” Regina grits out from the next room, and Marian departs from Henry to them to see them sitting opposite each other, Emma slouching low enough that her chin is resting on her arm and Regina is alternating between bending over the board and sitting straight to glare at Emma. They knock pieces off the board with ferocious glee until there are fewer than ten remaining and Emma is using her queen like a bludgeon as Regina dances circles around her and they haven’t even noticed Marian in the doorway.

 

Not until Emma hisses, “Ha. Check–“ and Regina’s finger on her king slips and the chess piece is shooting across the room, knocking down the rest as it hurtles toward Marian’s open mouth.

 

Regina appears in a puff of smoke in front of her and snatches the piece out of the air. “I suppose we’re done,” she says, glancing at the mess of the board.

 

“Oh, yeah. How convenient.” Emma narrows her eyes at Regina and Regina purses her lips, unmoved. Emma rolls her eyes. “Hey, Marian. Good day? No one trying to kill you?” They both look at her expectantly and she feels suddenly shy at their inquiring gazes.

 

“Only the usual,” she says, flushing when Regina peers at her face. “We were tracing those frozen trees, but they stopped too soon to see where they were coming from.”

 

“Huh.” Emma frowns. “I’m going to call Ruby and see if she can sniff anything out for you tomorrow. How long have these cold spots been appearing in the woods?” 

 

“Robin says he hadn’t seen any until after Zelena was defeated.” She thinks about it, brow creasing as she shifts in place. “Do you think it’s connected to me?” 

 

Regina’s jaw tightens. “No. Not you.” Emma fidgets beside her, brow creasing as she struggles to remember– _something_ – and Regina says, “Emma. A word in the kitchen.”

 

* * *

 

They’re shouting in tightly restrained voices, low and furious and struggling to keep it from Henry’s and Marian’s ears (is she one of the children in this family or somewhere in between?) and failing miserably, and Henry sits glumly at the dining room table, pushing his chess pieces back and forth on the board as he listens.

 

They talk about Emma in the past and Regina accuses Emma of being careless and Emma snaps back that she’s _trying_ and Regina’s one to talk about carelessness, isn’t she? And then they’re recounting old grievances and they begin on _Henry, Henry, Henry_ and it’s bitter and furious and Marian has never heard them like this. She glimpses them through the doorway and she’s never _seen_ them like this, either, Regina barefoot and still looming close enough to sneer up at Emma from much too close and Emma’s face dark and angry as she leans down.

 

“Maybe you should go upstairs,” Marian murmurs to Henry. “They won’t want you to hear this.” 

 

“I don’t care what they want.” Henry pushes forward the white knight and the black queen and shoves a white pawn between them. “They don’t care what I want, so why should I?” He swipes a hand on the table and knocks down all three as Emma’s voice rises.

 

Regina’s words sound wet, heavy with underlying frustrations and close to sobs, but her tone is still cutting and Emma lashes out with swift fury, slash-slash-slash and then she’s storming from the room and from the house and Regina hurls a glass after her that hits the wall and shatters.

 

Improbably but completely expected, a dozen shards of glass bounce off the wall to make a beeline for Marian, and Regina appears in the doorway to repair the goblet and settle it down onto the table. Her eyes are rimmed with red and she looks exhausted and angry and devastated and Henry won’t look up, so Marian retrieves the glass silently and walks past Regina into the kitchen. She finds Regina’s apple cider and pours a glass for the other woman that Regina accepts gratefully.

 

She swallows half the glass in one gulp and says, “I’m sorry you had to see that. Both of you. Emma and I are…volatile.”

 

Henry doesn’t respond. Marian says, “I’ve noticed.”

 

“It’s good that she left. Having her here was a mistake. I’m sure the _Savior_ would have found some new way to destroy me,” Regina mutters, and Henry sighs heavily and backs away from the table, stomping back to the living room. “I suppose I should go to him.” 

 

“No,” Marian says automatically. Regina is still drinking cider and pouring more with a wobbly hand, and she guides her to the table. It’s a strange kind of peace that settles within her at helping the Ev– _No._ Not the Evil Queen. It’s Regina whom she’s helping, settling down in a chair and pressing a hand to her back. Regina with a son in the next room and a…an Emma who she can still see from the kitchen window, pacing back and forth at the end of the block. “You need to calm down. Henry can wait.”

 

She takes out the whole pitcher of cider from the fridge and sets it on the table, and Regina’s head is drooping more and more with each sip taken. Marian sits opposite her and fills up a glass of her own.

 

Regina alternates between swallowing cider and staring out the window at the figure silhouetted in the streetlight, pensive, until she says abruptly, “I know you, don’t I?”

 

“Yes. You tried to kill me once, remember?” 

 

“No.” Regina blinks at her, head tilted and teeth pressed to her bottom lip. “Before. You were…you were a cousin?”

 

“Hardly.” She’d thought of Regina as a cousin for years, though that had faded once she’d heard tell of what the older girl had become. First whispers, more derisive than they’d been even at King Xavier’s court. _Cora finally bagged her king. The girl is just like her mother._ Then, at visits back to see her family, fearful murmurs and an odd hint of pride. For all their judgment of her, Regina had been one of their own, and she’d seized control of one of the mightiest of the higher kingdoms. Marian had grown wary. “But yes. My mother was a childhood friend of your uncle the king.”

 

Regina puts down her glass, massaging her temples as she fights to remember. “We rode together,” she murmurs. “Mother hated when I rode bareback and I had been angry with her for…something. Something inconsequential. I rode to spread rumors and you asked me to teach you.”

 

“You were the only girl in that palace I wanted to know.” She hadn’t been an outcast but she hadn’t exactly been one of the girls, either, too distant from the royal lineage to stand out as a notable acquaintance. And she’d only been a child, not yet schooled in the social niceties that princesses had been taught from a younger age. Regina had been different in her eyes, graceful and beautiful but an outsider as well, and she’d ridden that horse like a champion from the legends.

 

And she’d been nothing but patient with Marian, encouraging her forward and laughing with her. They’d spent two days lunching together in the harvest fields just outside the wet forests and she’d hung onto Regina’s every word and sworn she’d be just like her when she was fifteen, untamed and powerful and kind.

 

Regina is staring at her bleary-eyed, looking horrified. “I killedyou. You were…I didn’t have friends, not with my mother, but you were…I _killed_ you.” 

 

The cider and the argument have done their work and Regina’s defenses are down, her face more expressive than Marian’s ever seen before. Regina has always been distant around her, guarded and snippy even when she’s being kind, but now she’s gaping at Marian and shaking her head and there’s not a feature of hers that mirrors the Evil Queen’s, not now.

 

“You killed a lot of people,” Marian points out, uncomfortable. “That doesn’t change even if you’d spared me for our history.” 

 

Regina shakes her head again, the next admission emerging stilted and reluctant. “I wouldn’t have. I would have…I would have been infuriated by you helping Snow and killed you on the spot.” She catches Marian’s gaze before she can look away. “How the hell can you sit here with me like this?” 

 

She doesn’t know. She believes in redemption, of course- they’d had reformed villains within the Merry Men on occasion and Robin had always had a soft heart for those who’d turned from dark ways- but Regina had been a _menace_ , a terrifying, uncaring cold woman who’d wanted only the misery of others. She’d gloried in it, wiped out at least one full town of rebels who’d supported Snow White, and done it all with a sneer on her face, according to the stories.

 

And now she’s sitting in her kitchen with a glass of cider and Regina's son in the next room and she’s unafraid and it boggles her that they’ve gotten to this point, that somewhere along the line she’s come to genuinely care about Regina. That this is a place of comfort for her.

 

She shrugs uneasily and Regina doesn’t tear her gaze away, and when she says, “You’re going to live this time,” it’s both a non sequitur and not one at all, a promise when nothing else can be changed. When there is death written across Regina’s face and she won’t look away.

 

She still doesn’t know if living is so feasible, but it’s impossible to look at Regina in that moment and think otherwise.

 

* * *

 

Regina speaks to Henry while Marian pretends not to hear. The former queen has her knees curled up under her on the couch and she’s bent forward and there’s nothing in her eyes anymore but sincerity and even Henry begins to fold under that face. He sighs and shrugs and says, _I just want you to be friends_ and Regina looks just as wistful as she promises to work on it. 

 

She leaves happier than she’d come and Henry shuffles through the papers again, chewing on his lip and looking up at her. “You’re working with my mom now, right, Marian? Emma,” he clarifies, and she nods. “Can you tell her that her reports suck? How are you at paperwork?” 

 

It’s nice to laugh after the rest of the night. “Not good enough. I’m very new to this world _and_ to the sheriff’s station.”

 

“Damn.” He scowls and then his eyes widen. “Crap. I mean. Don’t tell my mom I said that or she’ll blame Emma for it, too.”

 

She switches couches to sit down beside him, leafing through the sheriff’s reports that he’s been organizing. “I hope your mother is properly employing you, too. You’ve been working at this for a while, haven’t you?” 

 

He sets the papers down. “Yeah, but I asked to do it. Mom works from home a lot more since the curse broke, so she has loads of paperwork here now. And it’s good practice.” 

 

“What for?” 

 

He shrugs self-consciously. “Politics? I kind of like this stuff.” He chews on his pen for a moment, looking down as though he’s too embarrassed to admit it. “I used to want to be a knight or a prince. Like a real fairytale hero. And it’s still cool to think about, but I wouldn’t want to live back in your world. Sorry.”

 

“I’m not offended. Your world is…” More structured, easier to understand. Open with opportunities unavailable in the old world unless you knew the right fairies or royals. She’d seen devastation and destitution there, and while she doesn’t doubt that it exists somewhere in this world, it isn’t in this town. “Freer.” 

 

He nods. “This is my town. My mom’s town. I want to take care of it and I guess I need to be the mayor to do that.” He twists the pen between his fingers. “And I’m pretty good at writing and math and getting people to do what I want, and I bet I could protect it like my moms do.” He fiddles with his pen, a bit red at the ears. “It’s stupid.”

 

“I don’t think it is,” she says, and he grins to himself and lifts up the papers again, eyes moving quickly through the lines on the page.

 

* * *

 

“You’re an idiot if you think running off is going to help anything. Henry was–“ A pause from down the hall, and then an indignant, “Yes, he was! I wouldn’t usemy son to bring you back here. Not that it’s not far more pleasant without you, _dear_.” Marian quirks an eyebrow as Regina continues snapping into the phone. “Fine. Sleep in your smoke-infested apartment and die, but don’t expect me to come to your funeral.” She hesitates for a moment, and Marian waits patiently, hand on her door to close it. “I don’t want you here,” she says, and falters. “Goodnight, Miss Swan.”

 

She clicks the phone off and catches sight of Marian across the hall. “I really hate that woman,” she mutters. Regina flushes from her ears, too, but forward to her cheeks instead of behind them like her son.

 

“Do you?” Marian asks innocently, biting back a smirk.

 

Regina opens her mouth to respond and the doorbell rings.

 

They hurry downstairs, Regina tugging on a robe and Marian snatching her shawl. Regina’s foot catches it on the last step and she goes flying into the air, the shawl catching her by her neck as Regina grabs her hand and they both crash to the ground. At least she’s still breathing.

 

It’s no surprise to discover Emma waiting behind the door, phone still in hand. More unexpected is Robin, equally sheepish as Emma claps her other hand onto his shoulder. “I…uh.” Emma’s blush is the same as Henry’s, dropping down to her neck. “I happened to be nearby when you called.” Her hair is windblown and she looks tired, like she’s been pacing the local streets for the past few hours. Or maybe just sitting on the porch, playing the waiting game with the other most stubborn woman in this world. “And I found a trespasser.”

 

“I didn’t wish to intrude,” Robin says quickly, and he’s avoiding eye contact with Regina with the same energy as she does him. “I was only waiting for…” He ducks his head like he’s being caught on their estate grounds and chastised by Marian's mother again and she can’t keep her heart from skipping a beat. 

 

“His wife,” Regina says, offering her a tight smile. “Of course you can come in.” 

 

“I shouldn't.” He takes a step back, and Marian touches his arm tentatively, glancing to Regina for confirmation. 

 

She nods and says, “You might as well, too,” to Emma, and turns on her heel to leave. Emma reaches for her elbow in the exact same motion as Marian had to Robin, and Regina halts. “What?”

 

“I…uh.” Emma licks her lips. “Do you have any coffee?” 

 

“It’s eleven at night.” 

 

“Right. I forgot.” She looks desperate to hang onto Regina’s arm and Regina turns reluctantly to face her. They have a conversation with no words at all, Emma reddening and Regina pursing her lips and both their faces pained like their eye contact alone is enough to strain at their insides. 

 

Marian takes pity on them both. “Regina, didn’t I see some of that grapefruit juice Emma likes in your icebo- fridge?”

 

“Yes!” Regina says, turning to face her, and Marian sees the moment she catches Robin’s gaze- bemused as he remains in the doorway- instead. 

 

She freezes up like she’s been trapped in place and he shifts closer to Marian and it’s a sudden new tension that fills the room. And Marian can’t keep herself from glancing from one to the other, searching for longing in their eyes. For something more than there is when Robin looks at her.

 

But there’s nothing but guilt and misery and discomfort. And maybe that’s indication enough that they’re unresolved and this is bound to go wrong again, but Marian can’t focus on that right now. She can’t think about _them_ because it’s not a part of a world that she’s in and– “That juice sounds good,” Emma says, her thumb running over the bend of Regina’s elbow, and Regina breathes out and breaks the contact with Robin.

 

They disappear into the kitchen and Robin says ruefully, “I didn’t expect Regina to get over me quite so quickly.”

 

“They aren't…well. They think they aren’t.” She cranes her neck to see them at the kitchen table, Regina pouring juice into Emma’s glass while Emma sits, hands wrapped around the cup as she remains intent on Regina’s face. “What brought you here?” she asks, leading him to the living room. He’s looking around as though he’s never seen the house before. It’s a petty relief.

 

“Ah. Yes. I was waiting to say hello?” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. 

 

She raises her eyebrows at him, seeing the lie on his face at once. “And yesterday?” she says on a hunch. She knows Robin better than anyone, even now, and the more she sees of him the less she believes that he’s become all that different.

 

It’s a direct hit, and Robin scratches at his beard shamefacedly. “It’s only that I don’t like being away from you now. Not after I lost you once out of my own carelessness.”

 

“It wasn’t your carelessness, it was mine.” She’d been determined to prove to herself that her skills were still sharp even after the months of sickness and Roland’s birth, and she’d ridden out to the edge of the Northern Kingdoms to hunt with her bow. Robin had had nothing to do with it.

 

He shakes his head. “You don’t know…I was going to go after you. I knew you were going to do something reckless. But there was talk of Prince James riding through Nottingham and I thought…I thought I’d catch up to you.” His fingers twist away from hers and he stares at the fireplace to his left.

 

She stares back toward the kitchen entrance, biting her lip. She’d known that he’d follow her, of course, and she’d been determined to lose him, a game they’d played dozens of times before. They’d rarely been down to the Evil Queen’s kingdom. Robin had never been one to meddle in magic and she’d teased his caution, had ridden down that way and expected him to track her down. And he hadn’t, and she’d been caught at the border. “You would have been captured, too,” she says finally. “Roland would have been alone. There’s no use in dwelling on regrets.”

 

But he moves to her and then away again, a hand brushing her hair from her face as his fingers settle to cup her chin. “I spent five years dwelling on regrets,” he murmurs, and she closes her eyes and feels his kiss brush against her lips. “I can’t lose you again.” 

 

He tastes like all her fears bottled up and released, like a future that terrifies her. Because without his regrets, without the pain of losing her, what will there be left between them? What will they be once the relief of seeing her again fades?

 

“You won’t,” she assures him, managing a smile, and she remembers flying bannisters and exploding ovens and a dozen other ways she’s been in danger today. And she wonders again if it might be easier if she were gone. _For the love of god, stop acting as though you’re already dead._  “Regina will make sure of it,” she says, and it’s with certainty.

 

His eyes soften. “I’m glad she’s taking care of you,” he admits. “There isn’t another person in this town as powerful I’d trust. Except perhaps Emma.” He frowns. " _Have_ they had a falling out?"

 

"Regina's very angry with Emma about...something. And Emma must be feeling guilty. She doesn’t strike me as the kind of woman who’d hang her head and let Regina vent at her without due cause.” She glances toward the kitchen again.

 

She can see his eyes, still curious, but she doesn’t have the energy to explain their suspicions as to the source of the rift. Surprisingly, there’s a growing part of her that doesn’t want to foster new anger between Robin and Regina. (It’s the part of her that’s beginning to believe that she might live, even in this shaky future where there’s only death. She isn’t _selfless_ about it.)

 

They speak of inanities and she folds awkwardly into Robin’s arms and thinks about Regina losing her happy ending. She thinks about Henry and Regina’s face around him, about Emma’s smile and Regina’s hesitant beam, and she doesn’t understand entirely why Regina would feel as though she’s lost anything at all when she’s had what Marian has now all along.

 

She hears their voices from the next room, still pitched too loud to be cordial but stilted enough that she knows they’re trying. And then she hears Regina, _Have you eaten anything tonight?_ and Emma’s mumbled  _I’m fine_ , and when she walks Robin out she sees them at the table, Emma staring down at a plate of food and Regina half-turned from the table with eyes that flicker back to Emma and then down to her twisting fingers, again and again and again.

 

* * *

 

“Sneezy reported a break-in last night, so I headed out here to check it out, and…” Emma gestured to the streetlamp outside the shop. Mulan brushes fingers against the ice and Marian spots the place where it hits the ground and radiates outward into the street.

 

“What was stolen?” Regina asks. She’s standing at a safe distance, but the lamp still disengages from the ground once to fall toward Marian’s head. Regina catches it with a twitch of her fingers and sets it back in place.

 

“Almost nothing. That’s the strange part. Not cigarettes, not any of the knives, nothing that usually vanishes from the shop. The candy displays were overturned and the refrigerators were frosted over, but nothing quantifiable.” She glances at her phone, flipping through photos while they look on. “Oh, and one other thing that he isn’t totally positive about, but…here. See those?” 

 

Marian blinks at the packaging on the box. “Are those for the bloodtime?”

 

Emma makes a face, and Regina says, “Menstruating, Emma.”

 

“Uh…yeah. You have these at home?” 

 

“We have cloths cut in the same way, with a glue below. Not in the woods with the Merry Men,” she amends, remembering hastily collected rags with sap pressed to them. “It’s an upper-class commodity. The ice creature has a bloodtime?” She contemplates the box and turns to Mulan. “Unless it’s…”

 

“You think that this freezing creature is no creature,” Mulan agrees, eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “You brought back…someone from the past. Not something. A girl.” 

 

“A royal,” Regina puts in. “No peasant would see that package and know what purpose it had.” 

 

“So a princess who can turn trees to ice.” Emma glances at her phone for another second before she slaps her head. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” 

 

They all stare at her, and she blinks at them. “Why are you not getting this? Have you all been living in a cave for the past year?”

 

“No, a castle,” Regina says dryly, and Mulan nods in assent. Marian says, “I was dead then.”

 

“Right. Crap. Why didn’t Henry figure this one out?” She rubs her eyes. “Elsa. It’s Elsa. Frozen? The Disney movie?” 

 

Regina heaves a long-suffering sigh. “A Disney movie called _Frozen_ came out and you didn’t think to inform us? _Emma_.”

 

“I really didn’t spend much time thinking about fairytales when I was away for the year!” Emma protests. “It made for a nice change, okay? Not that I knew it then, but I wasn’t seeing pictures of Snow White and thinking ‘Mommy!’ It was a nice place to be.” She ducks her head, glancing through her eyelashes at Regina. “ _Thank you_.”

 

Marian doesn’t know what the thank you is for, but Regina looks mollified at once. “Yes, well, we should get to finding this Elsa. She would have come up from…” Her voice trails off and she looks suddenly haggard, weary of something she doesn’t explain. Emma moves closer to her, a hand hovering against her back. Regina doesn’t pull away.

 

“The portal you two went through,” Mulan finishes when no one else does. “Where was that?” 

 

“Zelena’s house,” Emma murmurs, and Marian understands the stiffness now. 

 

“Your sister.” 

 

Regina nods stiffly. “Sister is an exaggeration. I hardly knew the woman.” But she’s turning away from them, that single crack in her facade apparently already too much. Emma steps forward with her and Regina pulls away this time. “If you touch me right now, I’ll turn you to ash,” she says through gritted teeth, and Emma rolls her eyes.

 

“Okay, Regina. Mulan, can you go get Robin and his men? If she turns us all to ice, we’re going to need some backup.” Emma calls up a map on her phone, tracing the lines on the screen to show Mulan where they’re going. “Marian, you’re with us. You’re a decent tracker, right?”

 

“I don’t have a werewolf’s nose, but I can find a girl in a house.” 

 

“Good.” She starts walking, Marian at her side and Regina a few steps behind. “Robin and I scoped out the house back when this started, but there was no sign of any animals or energy that would have been a problem. It hadn’t occurred to us that there was someone actively hiding from us.” She makes a face. “I never even saw the movie, I just watched the presentation at the Oscars. It was a whole big deal. Something about sisters. I didn’t have sisters- not permanent ones I liked- and I wasn’t planning on making Henry a big brother anytime soon, so…” 

 

“Well, I had a sister,” Regina muses darkly. “She killed herself when I offered mutual understanding, so I don’t think they’re all they’re cracked up to be.” 

 

Emma chews on her lip and says nothing. Marian murmurs, “You never said she killed herself.” She’d known that the woman was dead, but she’d also known that she’d been terrorizing the people for over a year before that. She’d wondered, more than once, if Regina had had to be the one to kill her, but this is somehow just as bad. _She killed herself when I offered mutual understanding_. Regina had reached out and her sister had chosen death.

 

“We found her gone the day you arrived, actually. My sister committed suicide and was replaced with a cousin I’m destined to kill. Not a surprising turn of events for my family, actually,” Regina says. It’s conversational, the edge to it just below the surface.

 

Regina offers facts, cold, pitiable facts that no one else will when it comes to her, even those who care about her. And maybe it’s about garnering sympathy, but it’s just as telling that this is the only way she can get it, and Marian feels a rush of compassion regardless as they walk to Emma’s yellow car.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently I just don't have much time during the week when I'm using all my free time for writing, so comment responses will come over the weekend. The final chapter should be out early next week!


	5. Chapter 5

The house is quiet, abandoned, but now that they know that there could be someone living inside it, it’s easy to find the markers. Disturbed dust more recent than a month ago, a bathroom with a package of those white pads carefully hidden under the sink. A bottle of whiskey that Regina visibly flinches at on a counter when nothing else is out. Zelena had kept her house spotless, and the girl inside it- _Elsa_ , as Emma keeps calling out- is neat but not nearly so.

 

“Hey! Elsa, we just want to help!” Emma shouts again. “Where the hell is she?” 

 

“Where would you go if you saw intruders coming?” Regina asks, but she’s gazing out the window toward a large block rectangle on the ground. There’s a dusting of white fuzz on top of it, and Marian can see faint, darker grass along the ground from the house to it. Snow, melted to water in Elsa's path.

 

“Right.” They traipse out there and wait by the entrance as Emma pulls the door to it open, Marian with her crossbow and Regina’s hands in motion at once. It gives with a yank and reveals…

 

Ice-slicked walls and ceiling and stairs. Snow everywhere, floating through the air in delicate flakes, heavy as the ice on everything but the floor. “Elsa?” Emma ventures, carefully descending the stairs. 

 

Regina follows, a warning hand brushing against Emma’s shoulder, and Marian is behind them. She has a better view from above of how the snow radiates from one spot, how there’s a huddled figure nearly covered in it like a human snowman, and she hisses out a warning as the girl springs to her feet. “No! You need to go!” she cries out, and Emma jerks and slides and takes Regina with her, slipping down the frozen stairs to land flat on the ground. 

 

Magic shoots from Elsa’s hands and there’s fresh snow everywhere, pulling Marian into its undertow and sweeping her to the ground, too. She can’t see the top of the cellar anymore, can’t feel anything but snow all around her, and she topples forward, losing control of her feet. Regina pulls her close, one hand trapped under a mound of snow as the other flips around to shield them. “I can’t control it!” Elsa says desperately, though they can’t see her anymore. “Please, you need to leave me alone!” 

 

“Oh, like hell,” Regina grits out, and Marian feels sudden warmth behind her as Regina’s hand lights on fire and she flings it into packed snow coated with ice. She turns just long enough to see it barely crack an inch of ice, something magical and glowing resisting it, and then another flash of ice shoots from Regina’s hole to crash into Marian. 

 

She cries out, the blow chilling her to the bone like an ice cube sliding through the center of her body, and Regina yanks and yanks until her arm is free, toppling the pile of snow beside them to reveal Emma curled up on the other side, her hand still extended and bent. Marian sits up, sliding off of Regina as her chest constricts with the effort. “We must get out of here.” 

 

But there’s snow all around them, thick and heavy and blocking the way out of the cellar. Regina turns and hurls a dozen fireballs at the walls, but they only reflect against the ice, bouncing around until she waves a hand and they evaporate. “Elsa, you need to let us go. I can help you direct your magic,” Regina calls, but there’s silence. Elsa has run from them after her final attack, and Marian shivers at the chill that runs down her spine and never quite goes away.

 

“No service,” Emma says, glancing at her phone. “Can’t you teleport us out of here?” 

 

“I’m trying,” Regina grits out, her brow furrowed as she focuses. “This ice is like a magical echo chamber. Nothing can enter, nothing can leave. All I can do is light a fire.” 

 

“Please,” Marian says, shivering again. She eyes the snow where Regina had cracked through it. “That’s where…I think Elsa shot one last blast of ice through there before she escaped. So that’s the exit. We’ll need to use whatever we have to cut through it.”

 

_Whatever they have_ winds up being Marian’s arrows to scrape at the ice and Regina’s fire, slowly but steadily eating away at what they’d scratched away as they huddle around the warmth. It’s not very warm, not when Marian can still feel something freezing in her chest, and she curls up on the ground at Regina’s beckoning, head heavy against Regina’s thigh.

 

Emma still sits beside Regina, a hand on her free one. “So you can use my magic, too,” she'd explained, but she’s still red-cheeked from more than the cold. Now she’s fidgety and Regina isn’t looking at her, and the air is stiff with tension anew.

 

“We’re going to get out of here,” Regina says finally, fingers threading through Marian’s hair. It’s a necessary warmth, and she sighs at what little coldness it can alleviate. “Mulan will see the snow here and make the connection.” 

 

“If we don’t run out of air first,” Emma points out. “Especially with the fire using up most of the oxygen in this cellar. Either we get free or we die.” 

 

“Nobody’s dying, Emma.” But Regina's voice is tired, worn out already from their fall into here and all the magic she’s using, and Marian opens one eye to see her shoulders sagging in an uncharacteristic slouch. 

 

“You sure you don’t want me dead? You’d get Henry all to yourself again,” Emma says it wryly, with undertones Marian doesn’t completely understand. And then she murmurs, “You know, I thought you were angry about Marian.” 

 

“I was angry about Marian.” Regina looks down and Emma shifts and slides instead on the frosted floor, closer to her. “I’m not anymore.”

 

“Yeah. She’s kind of great. I like her much more than Robin,” Emma stage whispers, catching Marian’s open eye. “Good trade.” 

 

Regina lets out a breath somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “It was,” she admits, and Marian’s heart would have turned to fire if she hadn’t been so cold. “It was less so to discover what you were…” 

 

“Yeah.” 

 

“You were going to take him and run.” 

 

“Yeah.”

 

“After what I’d given you, you were going to…” 

 

Emma’s hand slides around Regina’s waist before the other woman can pull away. “For what it’s worth, I think I was mostly talk. I didn’t even think I’d do it.” 

 

“For what it’s worth?” Regina echoes, and Marian is trying to think past the cold to understand what their conversation is about. Henry, most likely, and a nuance she’d missed between them. “It’s worth nothing. You were going to _take him away_ just after I’d gotten him back and you didn’t even deign to tell me.” She yanks her hand out of Emma’s and presses two fingers to her forehead. “Emma, I can’t trust you and your family when you keep trying to take away everyone I hold dear.”

 

“I know,” Emma whispers. “I’m sorry.”

 

“Whatever I’ve done in the past, if you’re deciding to accept me despite it, you can’t pick and choose how you treat me like a person. Like a _mother_.” Regina’s voice is getting thicker, huskier, like tears about to be shed. “So tell me now what this is. What I am to you. Because I can’t take this back-and-forth anymore. I can’t…”

 

“You’re Regina.” Emma says it with simple certainty, and Marian blinks up at them to see them staring at each other, Emma’s arm still with Regina captured within it and their faces very close. “That’s who you’ve always been to me. Even when you were a sociopath bent on killing me. Regina. Henry’s mom.” 

 

Regina lets out a strangled sob when she inhales and Emma doesn’t look away, doesn’t change her expression at all from the warmth of understanding. “I don’t want to be alone again. I don’t want to keep sacrificing and sacrificing and still have a hole in my heart.” It’s raw and more personal than what she might have shared with Marian, and Marian closes her eyes, feeling out of place even as Regina’s fingers continue an unconscious journey through her hair.

 

“You won’t,” Emma promises, and there’s a strained pitch to her voice, as though she’s holding back a sob of her own. “You’ll have Henry. I swear, you’ll always have Henry. And…” She inhales. “And me. If you want me. I’m here. Not going anywhere."

 

Regina’s hand lifts from her hair and Marian blinks up to watch her stroke along the fine bone above Emma’s cheek, achingly slowly. Emma is gazing at her and Regina is gazing back and Marian is so cold even as their eyes heat up the space between them and she’s outside of it.

 

She can feel something cracking within her into a yawning chasm, an emptiness like the hole Regina says is in her heart. _You’ll always have Henry. And me._ And she thinks of Roland and Robin and Regina’s knuckles brushing back Emma’s hair as Emma shudders under her touch and she doesn’t have what they have. She doesn’t have family, fully formed and dependent on her like Emma and Henry and Regina all are on each other. She’s still only an intruder.

 

Bitter longing washes over her, settling into the canyon in her heart, and she can hear every sound magnified in their underground prison, the chilled air pounding in her ears and the intake of Emma’s breath and the soft sigh Regina lets out like a whisper in the room. “I wouldn’t be able to get rid of you, anyway,” Regina murmurs with wry amusement, and her fingers return to Marian, brushing against her back. And Marian doesn’t know what she’s longing for anymore, if it’s her husband and her family or just Regina like this, gentle and affectionate with all her barriers gone.

 

She wonders if she matters to Regina. Not in the same way as Emma does. But perhaps. Perhaps.

 

“I promise not to bring back the dead wife of your next boyfriend,” Emma says brightly. “Even though you’ve been doing a great job at not killing her. I thought for sure you would have torched Marian with one of those fireballs.” 

 

Regina laughs. Then breaks off mid-snicker. “Wait.” She stiffens and Marian struggles to sit up. Her feet feel heavy, too weighted to move, and she slumps down again. “Why _haven’t_ I torched Marian yet? I was throwing fireballs around the cellar and not a single one touched her. And now this.” She twists abruptly and Marian blinks and comes face-to-face with a fireball, inches from her face. “Marian. Wake up.” 

 

“I’m awake. You can take that away.” The heat is overwhelming, the air around her suddenly thin and painful to breathe. And yet her hands are still freezing, her legs like blocks of ice, and her lungs feel like they’re underwater in a chilled pool of water. “Is this it? Is the cellar keeping you from killing me?” 

 

“No, that can’t be. Destiny isn’t magic or I’d be able to find a way to defeat it.” Regina’s eyes narrow as she reaches out to help Marian up, an arm supporting her as she pulls her closer. “I don’t- _what happened to you_?” 

 

“What?” But now she’s glancing down and seeing her hands for the first time. There’s a delicate latticework of ice under the skin, creeping up past her wrist and turning her dark skin a sickly shade of silver. She pulls herself up by painfully sore hands, her legs dragging along as she peels off her shoes and gapes at the blue ice under them. “ _Merlin_ ,” she breathes. “That bit of ice that came through when you threw that fireball. I think it hit me.” Directly in the heart, and she struggles to breathe again as Regina supports her. 

 

“She’s dying,” Emma says, eyes wide. “That’s why you’re not trying to kill her anymore. She’s already dying.” 

 

She breathes through the sharpness in her lungs, struggles to keep it steady but shakes violently instead. _Dying_. Still the intruder, and it’s time to depart at last. “I’m…” She can hear blood in her ears, a slowing rush that throbs against her temples as she trembles. “No,” she tries to say, but it catches in her throat and she closes her eyes, feeling the faint trail of water against cheeks that can barely feel anything anymore.

 

And then a voice slicing through her haze of cold and death and blood. “That’s unacceptable!” Regina snaps, grabbing Marian’s hand. It stings like ice and they both gasp. “I’m going to try to warm you up.” She presses their hands together anyway, defiance in her eyes even as their fingers ache, and Marian can barely feel the warmth beneath them.

 

“Be careful. What if you melt her?” Emma points out. She’s stood up and she’s pacing wildly, pressing against the small spot of thinning ice of the wall.

 

“Do you have a better idea?” Regina demands. And, in fact, the ice isn’t crawling quite as quickly up her arms now, the warmth of the fire slowing it down to a stilted shuffle. She moves closer, her stiff hands falling in Regina’s.

 

“No. No. Yes.” Emma straightens. “True love’s kiss. That works on this shit, right? We need to get Robin and we need to find Elsa and we’re going to save you, Marian.” She picks up Marian’s crossbow and aims it at the wall, firing clumsily. The arrow hits the snow instead and drops, and she loads it up and aims again.

 

Regina sighs, dropping Marian’s hands to go to Emma. “You’re going to take someone’s head off. Let me do it.” Her fingers linger on Emma’s for a moment and they share a significant glance, another Marian can’t quite untangle its meaning from. 

 

Determination. Emma and Regina have it written across their faces, as though they can somehow will her into living. But they don’t feel the ice in her heart, crawling up from her limbs toward her chest. They don’t see the white ends of her hair, threatening to rise higher every time she fumbles at them. 

 

And that’s it. More indirect than she’d imagined, but Regina had succeeded in killing her, after all. It had come unexpectedly, hit her when she’d been literally lying down, and she hates the injustice of it, of knowing that it’s over and there’s nothing she can do to save herself.

 

Regina is firing the crossbow now, closer than Emma but still missing the mark. “How far back do you need to be for it to have enough force?” Emma asks, and Regina grumbles something indistinct and takes aim again.

 

“Wait,” Marian says. They turn to look at her and she drags herself toward them, one hand extended. “I’ve never missed a shot with it. Let me.” 

 

“From that angle?” Regina asks doubtfully. “With your hands like that?”

 

But it’s _something_ , something she can do about her own fate, and she pulls the bolt back and holds her hands as steady as she can. It’s like being out in the woods with Mulan again on her first day back, looking to arm herself but out of practice after weeks in a prison cell. She can’t force her hands to steady but she can compensate for them, so she times the shaking of her hands with the clumsiness of maneuvering and fires.

 

The arrow sinks up into the ice and carves a thin line across its other side. She fires again, matching the angle and the slice into the ice to do the same on their side, and when she thumps against the ice wall, it shatters like glass into the snow, a thousand pieces sticking out at them and flying toward them as they duck. Marian would be cut up and bruised, she thinks, except she can feel how swollen her face is and she knows that ice can’t do much to ice.

 

As it is, Emma has a streak of red across her cheek when she charges forward. “I’m going in. Regina, you stay with Marian. See if…if Elsa comes back. If she can do anything.” She bends to place a reassuring hand on Marian’s shoulder, and turns halfway to glance back at Regina. “You’re going to be fine.” 

 

“Emma, wait.” Regina is hurrying forward, her own hand resting on Marian’s shoulder too.

 

“The snow isn’t as packed as the ice. I can break through it. And you need to stay here.” Emma gestures to Marian. “Your fire was slowing down the freezing, and it’s going to take some time to get to Robin.”

 

“Yes, I know all that.” Regina sounds impatient, frustrated, and there’s a deeper emotion there that Marian can’t quite name. “I just…”

 

“You just…?” 

 

“Nothing. Go.” She turns away and Emma sighs, crouching down beside Marian. Her eyes are lighter than Marian’s ever seen them, fierce and determined and calming all at once, and Marian’s beginning to understand how a touch from Emma is enough to soothe Regina in an instant. 

 

“You’re going to live,” Emma whispers. “I swear.” There’s something about Emma Swan that inspires, something that leaves Marian with unquestioned faith in her. She nods dumbly and Emma flashes her another smile and captures her in a quick hug, barely more than a reassuring squeeze. 

 

Regina hovers, flames still at her fingertips, and Emma rolls her eyes and grabs her wrist above the fire. “See you soon.” Regina is stiff and still for a long moment, and she finally moves forward just as Emma lets her go. They bump back together, arms fumbling around each other in an awkward embrace that is angled all wrong but neither one of them moves anyway, hands brushing against each other as they hold on.

 

When they separate, they’re both flushing. Emma licks her lips and steps to the side, eyes bright. “Wanna start me off?” 

 

A series of fireballs in quick succession and Emma is in the snow, pushing through slush and sparking little flames of her own as she burrows through. Regina slides back to the ground beside the broken wall of ice, hands on fire again as she runs them up and down Marian’s arms. “She’ll be able to do a lot more with her hands than with her magic with this snow,” she murmurs. “Snow doesn’t melt quite so quickly. But the fire should help. It won’t be long now.” 

 

She barely manages to nod, and Regina draws her closer again, wrapping warm arms around her back and arms and pulling her onto her lap, her legs together and slowly whitening knees bent just above Regina’s legs. The other woman’s hands join together under her heart, and the warmth feels just a little more attainable. “I don’t think Emma’s capable of _not_ trying to save anyone,” she says ruefully. “She’s…she’s a good person. And she cares about you. She cares about everyone, much more than I ever could.” 

 

Marian’s head falls back against Regina’s shoulder, and Regina tightens her grip on her. “You seem to care about this town.” She sees it in the way she works for them, in Henry’s determination to be like his mothers. For all Regina’s coolness, she _cares_ , and it’s what had made her so frighteningly unpredictable as a queen and so human as a mayor.

 

“I care about my family. Where they live, too, I suppose.” 

 

“They?” she prompts, thinking of Emma’s eyes when she looks at Regina, and Regina sighs against her.

 

“My son. His…extended family.” Orange flames lick against the sides of Marian’s arms. “Long lost cousins and the people they care about.” It hurts to breathe but she gasps anyway, startled at the admission so freely given. Regina laughs low in her throat. “I haven’t held anyone like this since Henry found out he was adopted.” Her voice is a rumble against Marian’s hair, and Marian shuts her eyes. “And before that, a dead boy.”

 

There’s something unbearably comfortable about this, surrounded by Regina’s arms. It feels like home and a mother she’ll never see again, like Robin had held her when she’d believed that he loved her. Like  _family_ , reforged and rediscovered. “Never your sister?”

 

“I barely knew my sister.” But the pain is clear in Regina’s tone, raw like a gift yanked away before it had ever been opened.

 

“I’m sorry,” she says.

 

And Regina shudders against her and is silent, and something within Marian tells her to wait. To listen to the silence, to dripping of snow and Emma scraping at the snow somewhere above them, as Regina gathers her thoughts. “I don’t believe that she killed herself,” she whispers finally, a secret she doesn’t dare share with the world.

 

“What?” 

 

“Everything- my gut, my dreams, common sense-  _everything_ tells me that she wasn’t ready to die. My mother doesn’t make daughters who give up so easily.” The flames spark and die, but Regina doesn’t seem to notice. “And I keep thinking about that scene, about Zelena alone and waiting for me to come back, and I see him there. I wake up some nights and I think I’m  _her_ , and I look up and he’s there.” She shakes her head. “And maybe she’s sending me a message from beyond the grave. Maybe I  _was_ her last thought. Maybe it’s wishful thinking.” 

 

Marian's trembling, too, and the cellar feels ever colder. She thinks she can see the sun shining through Emma’s hole. “Who is he?” 

 

Regina presses her chin to Marian's hair. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t…I can’t seek vengeance here. I can't fall to anger again. My sister killed herself,” she declares, and Marian feels again the curious sensation of tears sliding down an ice-layered face.

 

The only death Marian's truly known in her life had been her own, imminent and five years past, and she thinks of dead stable boys and sisters and Regina who’d once been a child so much like her. “I’m sorry,” she says again.

 

“You don’t have to be.”

 

“I know.” The first time she’d seen Regina in this world, standing at the center of Granny’s with contentment on her face while Marian had looked on, she’d been terrified and furious a moment later. For all she’d lost, for all she’d been through, it had felt like a glancing blow to know that Regina had endured. That she would be the first familiar face Marian would see in the present.

 

And instead she’d become an anchor, the only one Marian had been able to hold onto throughout this adjustment period. Her support, even as she’d become more and more of a threat than she’d ever been to Marian as the Queen. And Marian doesn’t remember hatred anymore, not to the Regina who’s holding her in her arms now and murmuring halfway audible reassurances in her ears as her hands light up again. For her she can mourn, for the woman who had lost and taken and has stopped taking but continues to lose.

 

And who still stands to gain from her death, but she’s too tired to be resentful about it. “Is this the part where I’m meant to give you my blessing?” she asks, and Regina frowns into her hair.

 

“Marian–“ 

 

“I don’t want to,” she admits, her voice scratching at her ice-clogged throat. “Maybe it’s selfish.” 

 

“It’s human.” Regina pulls back, settling her against the wall as she keeps fire licking at Marian's frozen legs. Her head is bent and Marian can’t see her face when she talks, and her voice is even. “You will never be obligated to feel otherwise.”

 

“I don’t want to say it’s okay. When it’s not. It’s never going to be okay.” She thinks about the three of them, Regina and Robin and Roland like a happy family she isn’t a part of, and she struggles to summon up resentment. But she’s so tired. “But I don’t…I don’t want you to be alone or miserable. Any of you. And I know I don’t have a choice in the matter…but I don’t want to give you my blessing,” she says again. She can’t be a noble martyr, dying for someone else’s love. She can’t accept it no matter how likely it is to be true.

 

“No,” Regina agrees in a careful tone, and something within Marian cracks.

 

“But you have to make sure that Roland is looked after. And that…that Robin smiles sometimes. I still want him to smile. I want you to smile, too. And take care of Emma and Henry. All right?” 

 

Regina’s jaw is working beneath her skin. “You’re not going to die,” she says with firmness that Marian doesn’t feel. “Emma’s already out of the cellar, and Robin must be on his way. True love’s kiss can–“

 

“And what if it isn’t true love?” Marian demands, insecurity washing up over her again. “How can you be so sure that Robin can save me?”

 

Regina blinks at her, gaze lifting at last to meet Marian. “He would walk through hell for you, Marian.” She says it like a memory, like an admission that still burns. “He spoke of nothing but you all the time. You’re…you’re his _everything_ , haven’t you noticed?” Marian shakes her head silently and Regina purses her lips. “He spent every night you were at my house lurking on the grounds, watching over you. I found him asleep on my patio yesterday morning because he hadn’t been able to leave your side.” 

 

She rolls her eyes. Marian says, “I know that. I know he’s afraid of me dying again. But that doesn’t mean–“ 

 

Regina cuts her off. “Did you know that he turned down that job in the sheriff’s department just so you could take it?”

 

“What?” 

 

“That he gave Mulan extra work so Roland would have to spend time with you before he got to know you?” She squeezes Marian’s hands and Marian’s trembling, her head pounding. “He’s been doing everything he can to make sure that you’d be happy here. That you could find somewhere you belong.” 

 

She gapes at Regina. “I didn’t know,” she manages. She can’t process this overload of information now that she’s freezing to death in a cellar and Robin is coming, coming, and maybe this really is still belonging. Maybe she isn’t just a road bump. Tears sting at the corners of her eyes again and now she can’t even feel them once they touch her icy face. “It really…it really is true love?”

 

Regina nods, and she’s smiling, the old pain gone and replaced with something sweet and young as the girl who’d ridden with her decades ago. “He loves you. There are a lot of people out there who love you, Marian.” 

 

“There are a lot of people I love, too,” she chokes out, and Regina moves back to her, tucks her chin over her head and cradles her in her arms. She moves sluggish limbs to wrap her own arms around Regina in return, to bury her face in her neck and cry cold tears against her shoulder. It’s overwhelming, how her heart is frozen and burning right now, how she wants to _love_ and _feel_ and dare to believe in a happy ending even while she’s encased in ice and can’t feel very much of anything at all.

 

She can see the ice still rising under her skin, nearly over her knees now and up past her elbows, and she doesn’t know what will happen when she’s fully encased, but she’s suddenly less than content to find out. Her legs splay out and she presses heavy hands against the floor, spreading them flat as she pushes herself to a half stand. 

 

“What are you doing?” Regina says, sounding alarmed.

 

“Getting up,” she pants. “Help me.” 

 

Regina might be tiny in her heels and little dress but she's surprisingly strong. She tucks her hands under Marian’s arms and _lifts_ , both of them stumbling backward into the ice wall as they regain their balance. “I want to try to get out there.” Marian nods to Emma’s hole. “If I can. I want to find Robin before I’m turned to ice.”

 

Regina looks…not displeased about it. Maybe there’s even a hint of pride there. “Then let’s get on with it, shall we?”

 

They shuffle together to the hole in the snow, and Marian slips down to where Emma had burrowed through it. She pauses. “Regina.” 

 

“Yes?” 

 

“I just…you should know. You don’t have to be alone.” She doesn’t know if she’s overstepping, if she’s offering more than Regina would want for her. But she’s half dead and being pushed into a giant hole in the snow, and suddenly being in the way is the least of her worries.

 

Regina laughs shortly. “The last person who told me that ran off into the distance with a deadly ice queen on the loose. But that’s Emma for you.” 

 

She looks at once wistful and a little shy, and Marian takes another leap and says, “I think it’s okay. That you and Robin didn’t work out.” Regina blinks at her and she bites her lip. “Maybe I’m not the one to judge that. But you have…you have other people who make you happy, don’t you?” She thinks about Regina and Emma, frozen in limbo whenever they’re too close, and amends, “People who could.”

 

Regina looks at her for a long moment, eyes narrowed as though she’s struggling to pin down exactly what Marian is saying and coming up short, and Marian heaves herself forward and scrabbles for purchase in the ice.

 

* * *

 

They combine some limited magic from Regina and a lot of determined inching forward from Marian and, bit by bit, they pull themselves up the channel Emma had dug through to the top. The snow isn’t smooth but rough and disturbed, there’s a hint of stair just below them as they climb forward, and before long they’re emerging into the sunlight and a very different world than the icy chamber below.

 

“Warming up?” Regina asks, a hand sliding around Marian’s waist to support her. 

 

“I wouldn’t quite say that,” she says, shivering, but there’s sun shining down on her and she can feel the crawling under her skin slowing. “But I think I can make it a little longer up here.”

 

“Good.” Regina smiles at her, eyes crinkling in a most un-Regina-like way. She’s gentler than she’s ever been before…no. Not ever. This is Regina who’d guided her on a horse, who’d ridden with her and  addressed her as an equal even when she’d been only a child.

 

“What?” Regina asks, her brow furrowing at Marian’s face.

 

Marian shrugs. “This…feels familiar, doesn’t it?”

 

Regina looks startled, then not at all. “A bit,” she admits. “You were one of my only good memories that year. It was…not one of the better ones. My mother had begun parading me off to be married and she was furious at our reception by the court. The aftermath was agony.” She rolls her eyes but there’s deeper pain beneath that, indication that _agony_ might not be an exaggeration at all. “I wanted to go back, you know. To see you again. But Mother thought it would be weak to return to those who had spurned me.” 

 

“I was hoping you’d return. I never saw you again until…well.” She settles against Regina as they round the side of the house. Her shoes are still off, but she can’t feel any pebbles or grass against ice-coated feet. “A different time.” 

 

Regina doesn’t apologize. Regina doesn’t often apologize, not in so many words, and Marian understands that because she can’t begin to comprehend how Regina ever  _could_ apologize. There are no words to allay any of past evils, no responses that could satisfy her victims. There are only her actions, fierce and protective as they’ve become. And Regina’s fingers tight around her waist, warm through a thin layer of ice that’s beginning to crust there.

 

They stumble past the next corner to the front of the house and she says, “Do you think we’ll–“

 

She stills, her eyes landing on a small figure huddled across the field, swathed in blue and white. Her head is down against her knees, her hands tucked somewhere inside her cocoon, and Regina stiffens beside her. “She’s back,” she says, but she sounds relieved, and Marian turns to frown at her and sees that she’s looking to their right instead. There’s a tiny flash of yellow in the distance making its way down the road, swerving and far too fast. “She’s going to get herself killed,” Regina murmurs, squeezing Marian’s shoulder where it’s too frozen to hurt. 

 

Marian nods with a jerky movement but her eyes are still on Elsa, watching the girl for a sign of stirring. They can’t startle her. She’s had too many stakeouts like this, with an unsuspecting target becoming a threat when taken by surprise, and Elsa is as deadly as a barrage of arrows. “Regina,” she whispers, and then Emma’s car comes sputtering up and Elsa jerks and everything is very suddenly _dire_. 

 

Elsa is whispering, “No, no, no,” and she turns as her hands come forward and Regina is stepping closer, Regina who can’t turn away from a fight when it’s going to _kill_ her and Marian is so slow, icy hands moving like molasses. “Why didn’t you leave?” Elsa cries out, and she’s clenching her fists but the magic is glowing dangerously around them and Regina says something Marian can’t hear because she’s forcing herself closer, step by interminable step, and then Elsa’s hands flash white.

 

It’s everywhere, glowing ice in every direction, and Marian throws herself forward at the last moment as magic bursts from Elsa directly at Regina. There’s a shout from the distance as it surges into Marian instead, hitting her like a battering ram from the bottom of her stomach up to her heart- _again_ _-_ as she falls forward.

 

Regina catches her midway through, she thinks, though the ice that had been crawling up her limbs and from her hair is racing now, coating and recoating her in layers until she can’t feel anything at all beyond an odd warmth suddenly growing in her heart. _Is this what dying feels like?_ she wonders, and there’s a low sob from somewhere in front of her.

 

She blinks, trying to see out of blurry eyes, and she knows the grip that settles on her hands even as she loses the ability to feel anything there at all. All she can see is a tan blur in front of her, and a hoarse voice saying, “You imbecile. Robin was _right here._ ” She can still hear shouts, familiar and unfamiliar as magic sparks around them. “Why would you jump in front of me?”

 

She wants to laugh, to explain the wealth of feeling that still swells within her even as she turns to ice. She wants to explain just how vital Regina is to the people she cares about, the image she’d had at the last moment of Henry and Emma and even Robin and Roland. She wants to say, _I die on my own terms, too_ , and to admit how her stomach drops at the thought of a world without Regina in it.

 

But she can feel her jaw cooling and she can return with only one explanation, three words that have been her everything for so long since she’d come here. “You’re…not…dying,” she manages, and the last thing she hears is soft weeping as a furnace roars to life in her chest and she knows nothing more.

 

* * *

 

And then, a gentle touch like lips against her forehead.

 

It’s the first awareness that she still _has_ a forehead, that she is skin and bones and warmth, and it’s only then that she hears a gasp of surprise and Robin’s voice, wild with panic. “I don’t understand. Is she…?” But it isn’t Robin’s lips she feels, and she wiggles softening fingers and breathes through lungs that pump air in and out without strain and finally, finally opens her eyes.

 

“Regina?” she whispers, and Regina jerks back, eyes wide. 

 

“Marian!” Her eyes are red and her hands are still on Marian’s rapidly thawing ones and it looks as though she hasn’t moved, hasn’t budged since Marian had…died? Had she died? 

 

“Was I dead?” she asks, and then her hands are dropped as Robin blows forward, drops to the ground with tears streaming down his face and he kisses her, again and again and again. She catches one grimace from Regina and she laughs, joyful and enlivened with the sun on her face and Robin holding her like he’ll never let go. “I’m alive. I’m alive!”

 

Robin pulls away to beam at her. “You certainly are.”

 

And she hadn’t been sure she’d ever see him again, she hadn’t known that they’d ever have anything more, but the wildness has abated and he’s only Robin again, serene in his confidence in her. She presses her lips to his cheek and she closes her eyes and whispers against stubble, “Thank you.” 

 

“I did nothing. You…somehow you saved yourself.” He looks puzzled. “Or Regina did. I’m not quite sure what happened, but I suppose we owe you…” His voice trails off and he looks to his side. “Regina?” 

 

It’s only then that she notices that Regina is gone, run to the other end of the field where Emma and Mulan and a girl she doesn’t recognize are bent over Elsa. Emma is shouting still, she suddenly realizes, shaking Elsa by the shoulders as the other blonde struggles to fight her off with newly gloved hands and the other girl is yanking at one of Emma’s arms uselessly, shouting just as loudly as Emma bellows. “ _You don’t hurt them! You don’t touch Regina!”_ They’re a mess of limbs and angry faces and Mulan is standing back, arms crossed and eyebrows raised as she looks down.

 

“Oh, for crying out loud, Emma, we’re _fine_ ,” Regina is snapping, shoving aside the new girl to pull Emma to her feet. Emma stops thrashing immediately and spins around, seizes Regina by the face and kisses her solidly.

 

Marian snickers. Robin rolls his eyes. Mulan delicately turns away and Elsa and the other girl just look taken aback.

 

They separate for a moment to stare at each other. Emma seems utterly bewildered at her own choices and Regina’s mouth is opening and snapping shut before she closes the gap between them again, looking suddenly determined, and they both sink gratefully into another kiss. There’s no more of the awkwardness of that hug from earlier, just Emma and Regina lost in each other in a wholly satisfying way for anyone who’d had to endure them until now. Marian doesn’t even think to look at Robin for a minute, and when she does, he’s vaguely uncomfortable but smiling.

 

“Hey!” the new girl says, finally pushing at Emma again until she’s physically detached from Regina, who scowls at the girl in response. “You don’t just attack my sister like that and then go around kissing people!”

 

“Well, maybe she should stop freezing people I care about!” Emma retorts, her hands sliding onto Regina’s shoulders. Regina seems equally reluctant to move away, hands twisting as she moves one tentatively to Emma’s hip.

 

Marian can feel the last of the ice fading from her legs, and she shakes them, testing her strength as she steps toward the group. It’s the most painful sensation of pins and needles that she’s ever had, and she slips to the side. Robin catches her, supporting her as best as he can as she hobbles toward them, the pain in her feet coming and going. 

 

“I never meant to hurt anyone,” Elsa is saying desperately. “My magic hasn’t been working properly here, and my gloves were supposed to keep it contained, but here…” She shakes her head and her sister squeezes her other hand comfortingly.

 

“We were able to find these new ones from the Dark One’s collection. It’s okay. He didn’t even make a deal for them.” The girl frowns. “Actually, maybe we should be worried about that.”

 

“Anna,” Elsa sighs, but then she’s hugging her sister and they’re holding each other just as tightly. Emma and Regina are back to staring at each other from a rapidly shrinking gulf, and Marian is close enough at last to lay a hand on Mulan’s shoulder. 

 

“Marian,” Mulan murmurs, and her smile is blinding. Marian can’t help beaming, either, surrounded by so many people she cares about and still standing, and she throws her arms around the other woman, burying herself in the comforting scene of leather and metal polish and the woods. 

 

“I’m so glad you’re here. And I’m here.” 

 

“And I’m not trying to kill you anymore,” Regina says from behind them. She’s holding Emma’s gun in hand and it hasn’t exploded in Marian’s face, hasn’t discharged unexpectedly, and all it’s doing is clearing a space in Emma’s holster that Regina’s fingers are currently occupying. “We’ve foiled the fates, it seems.”

 

“An act of true love,” Elsa says softly, eyes gleaming. “The only thing that can thaw a broken heart.”

 

“An act of true love?” Regina repeats, fingers clenching against Emma’s belt. 

 

“She stood before you. You kissed her. I don’t know which was necessary to break it, but you share true love. Perhaps with more than one, even.” She cocks her head as her eyes move from Robin to Emma. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I wish I were able to…” She lets go of her sister to wrap her arms around herself tightly, suddenly just a girl again, deadly powers or not.

 

“I can help you with that,” Regina murmurs. “If you’d like.” She hasn’t looked at Marian yet and Marian can’t tear her eyes away. _An act of true love. You share true love_.

 

Elsa looks up at her, suddenly hopeful. “Could you?” 

 

Regina nods. “You'll need to stay here for the time being. I can’t have you lose control in town.” 

 

“That’s fine. I have my sister now.” They exchange happy grins and Anna reaches out to squeeze the gloved hand again. 

 

Marian is still watching Regina, and she startles when Regina turns to her. “You’ll want to move out now, I suppose.” Her tone is controlled, curt as it had been when they’d first met here, and Marian recoils like she’d been stricken. “Emma, if you could meet us at my house?”

 

Emma glances between them, brow furrowing. “Uh. Sure. Anyone need a ride back to town?” 

 

There are murmurs of assent and a hand on Marian’s arm and then she’s surrounded by purple smoke in Regina’s foyer. “Regina,” she starts, and she doesn’t know what she can ask. Why Regina is suddenly distant again, as though nothing that had happened had changed anything and they’re back to square one now that there’s nothing to bind them together. Nothing except _true love_ , and Regina is her cousin, her sister, her friend. Regina is…

 

“Pack up your things. I won’t bother you.” There’s a flash of something in Regina’s eyes, dark and miserable and guilty, and Marian takes a step forward. “Please,” Regina whispers, turning away, and Marian watches with confusion and hurt as Regina flees into the kitchen.

 

It’s the last time she speaks to Regina for a long while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *ducks* Don't hurt me! Turns out this fic needs a whole extra chapter, which I am already hard at work at, I promise. Please let me know what you think! <3


	6. Chapter 6

“Orange?” Mulan asks, and Marian catches it by reflex. She’s perched on a lower branch in the trees near the encampment, leafing through a book of town ordinances Emma had loaned her. She might not be seeing much of Henry anymore, but she does have more sympathy for him now that she’s seen Emma’s paperwork, and she’s decided to do them both a favor and get to work on it. She’s been versed in the runnings of landowners since a young age, and Storybrooke isn’t that different, if perhaps less divided by class.

  


“Mama!” comes the second voice. Marian perks up. Roland scampers up the tree, settling between two branches just above her. “I played in the sprinklers at the park. Philip got all wet.” He giggles and Mulan leans back against the tree, combing her fingers through her own wet hair as she gazes up at them.

  


Marian quirks a brow. “Aren’t you going to come up here?” 

  


“I don’t climb trees.” 

  


“You’re a Merry Man now. We all climb trees, right, Roland?” He bobs his head in agreement. 

  


Mulan grins up at him. “Even Little John?” 

  


“Especially Little John,” Marian informs her. “There’s a woods back home with trees as thick as a great dragon’s neck, and a whole community has built houses up in the sky. Little John grew up with them.” She pats the trunk she’s leaning against. “No excuses. Come on up.”

  


Mulan shakes her head but she climbs with surprising ease, scaling the length of the tree in moments until she’s settled just behind Roland against a tree that touches Marian's, a protective arm around his waist. Marian can’t help but smile at them, old jealousy abating bit by bit with more time spent with Roland. “So you really did go out with Aurora today?” 

  


Mulan sighs. “I guess it’s time to adjust. Neither of us is going anywhere, and I can’t blame her for loving who she does. It’s up to me to come to terms with that.” Her legs dangle down and she draws them against the branch. “And they are both close friends.” 

  


“It can’t be easy for you.” 

  


“I have a friend who spent several days living with her husband’s soulmate.” Mulan purses her lips and Marian’s stomach bottoms out at the mention of Regina. “It could be much, much worse. I am certain I will love again.” Her eyes are thoughtful and she doesn’t expand on that epiphany, but there’s the hint of something bright there, something new that’s begun to blossom.

  


Marian can’t ask. She still feels shaky, nauseous at thoughts she’s been pushing from her mind, and it takes all she has to offer an encouraging smile. “You will,” she agrees, inhaling deeply. “If not Aurora, then someone else. Anyone would be lucky to be had by you, Mulan.”

  


Mulan watches her, lips pressing downward in sympathy, and she says, “And you, Marian. I am honored to be your friend, and I know that I’m not alone in that. If Reg–“ 

  


“Please.” She swallows. “Let’s not.”

  


They don’t. They talk about work and the Merry Men and the woman Elsa is terrified may still be hunting her down in Storybrooke and they don’t touch on another woman, sitting in an office across town and avoiding Marian with all she has.

  


* * *

  


It’s impossible to avoid her altogether when their paths cross through so many people, and she isn’t surprised when she enters the station one morning to find Regina leaning back against the side wall while Emma stands, hands on Regina’s hips as her lips graze Regina’s ears. Regina is murmuring something to her, eyes open and focused on Emma while Emma's have drifted shut, her fingers delicate on the blonde's cheek as though it might shatter if she presses too hard. She doesn’t see Marian until Marian clears her throat uncomfortably and they both start.

  


Regina’s eyes are still peaceful, heavy-lidded and hungry, and it’s only when she sees Marian staring at her that the emotion fades away into the mask Marian is growing accustomed to. She offers her a jerky nod and the tips of her fingers run across Emma’s face and down to her neck, drifting from her but not quite breaking free until she looks back at Marian again. And when she finally lets go, an invisible wall slams into place around her, warding Marian off with her gait and eyes and ramrod-straight back as she exits the room.

  


Emma chews on her lip and says nothing. Marian says, “You two are getting on nicely now.”

  


“Yeah.” Emma can’t stop the smile from curling at the corners of her mouth. “I guess we are. It’s still…it’s really new. Sometimes I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and wonder what the fuck we’re doing because it’s not us at all. But somehow it is.” She shrugs helplessly, still beaming. “And now I’m turning into some kind of _romantic_ over this. Stop me, Marian.” 

  


A laugh bubbles up, somewhere under the resentment and hurt in a space where she’s genuinely glad for both of them. “I don’t think you need to be stopped. You’re happy. You’re in love.”

  


Emma’s eyes widen. “In love. I don’t…let’s not get that U-Haul out just yet.” She laughs, as twitchy as she’d been back when Marian had first mistaken them for a couple. “I’m still figuring things out, okay? Just…feelings. Disgustingly strong feelings. Feelings all over the place like a shitty romantic comedy. We _kissed in the rain_ yesterday.” She says it with raised eyebrows and a twist of her lips like it’s significant, and Marian nods obediently.

  


“But enough about that.” Emma’s a delicate shade of pink now, and she ducks her head to rummage through her files. “How’ve you been settling back in? Happy to be home?” 

  


“It was never really home,” she says, and unbidden, thoughts return to her of sitting on a porch of the mansion and listening to the voices inside. Of longing, of a quiet voice beside her, of tentative arms around her and a new feeling of belonging. 

  


Back then, she’d only wanted to be home. To feel that sense of _family_  with Robin and Roland. She’d been out of place and she’d been thrown into a new family while still longing for the old one, and now she’s regained the people she cares about and she’s still longing for the ones she’d found. There’s still an odd burning on a specific spot on her forehead and her stomach still churns whenever Regina walks past her without a second glance and she doesn’t understand, she doesn’t know why it had gone this way.

  


But Emma is watching her with aching compassion, and she says, “I don’t know why she’s…why she’s being like this. I’ve tried talking to her about it but she refuses. She won’t ask– but when I talk about you, she listens. She misses you.”

  


“There’s no reason for her to be around me anymore.” Marian drops into the chair beside Emma’s desk, avoiding her eyes. “She doesn’t need to keep me alive anymore. I was a nuisance, not someone to miss.”

  


Emma picks up a paper on the desk and begins to fold it. They’ve graduated past what Emma calls paper airplanes into paper arrowheads, which aren’t very dangerous but thrill Roland when he’s visiting. “That whole true love thing may be crap, but I don’t think it qualifies for nuisances.” The paper folds unevenly and she balls it up and tosses it into the trash. “Look, Regina didn’t even want to talk to me after what happened.” 

  


“You seem to have managed fine.” 

  


“Yeah, well, she also didn’t want to let go of me. I had it easy.” Emma winks and shrugs and Marian rolls her eyes despite herself. “Give her time, okay? She’s processing. You’re processing. There’s a lot to figure out.” 

  


* * *

  


There _is_ plenty to figure out, but Marian feels like she’s floundering again, even in this new world worth living in. She has a job now, a loving family, friends…but there’s something _missing_ , something she’d barely gained before she’d lost it. She wanders aimlessly through the woods in the evenings, accompanied by Mulan or Robin more often than not, torn between gratitude and misery.

  


When they’re not there, she finds herself moving closer and closer to Zelena’s old house, where she knows that Elsa and sometimes Emma are training with Regina. She never ventures from the woods and flinches whenever Elsa’s white-blue magic erupts from her fingers but she finds excuses to stay in the area, to listen to Regina lecturing them. 

  


“Think of your magic as contained in a sieve,” she’s telling them today. Emma is restless, pacing in circles around the other two and occasionally moving to brush past Regina, and Elsa is silent and obedient. “Only in this world, the holes are all the wrong sizes. So when you’re used to a series of smaller gaps through which you can control the flow of your magic, it’s all pouring out at once. It exhausts you and it’s dangerous and _Emma_. Stop that.” Emma is flicking little flames from her fingers at the ground, setting individual stalks of grass on fire. She jolts at Regina’s voice and makes a face.

  


Marian smiles and Regina moves on, guiding Elsa’s hands as though she isn’t afraid of being turned to ice. “Elsa, you can freeze a tree, but can you do an individual branch?” She waves her hands toward the dark woods where Marian is walking and a branch detaches from a nearby tree. Marian stumbles back, banging into the closest trunk.

  


Regina frowns. “I’ll be right back.”

  


She walks to the edge of the woods and Marian doesn’t move, doesn’t budge from her place even when there’s a harsh, “Show yourself!” and Regina lights a fireball, illuminating the woods in front of her. 

  


Their eyes meet and Marian thinks she should be embarrassed, she should be afraid, but all she can feel is the same stubbornness she’d felt back when Regina had walked from the Dark One’s shop and told her to stay away. She doesn’t want to hide away, to be forgotten again. To stop mattering.

  


And she knows in that moment, Regina stock-still in front of her with her eyes startled and unguarded, that she does still matter to her. That Regina couldn’t look so afraid if she didn’t. “What…” Regina inhales sharply. “What are you doing here?”

  


She wants to run back into the woods, to leave Regina standing there in the night wondering if she’d only seen a mirage. She wants to snap at her and she wants to be aggrieved but Regina is still standing there, fireball rising and waning and her eyes bare with emotion, and she knows that she must look equally lost to Regina, equally unsure. “I don’t know,” she confesses, rubbing her fingers against the tie of her coat. “Do you?”

  


Regina shakes her head and takes another step forward, and Marian stands, waiting, waiting…

  


And then there’s an explosion from behind them and Regina startles, turning back to where Emma and Elsa have somehow managed to burst the branch into a thousand tiny pieces. “Emma!” she says reprovingly, jerking out of whatever spell had been holding them together.

  


She doesn’t turn back and Marian flees at last.

  


* * *

  


She’s curled up against Robin at night when she cries silently, shoulders heaving and breaths short and gasping, and he brushes his lips against the top of her head and croons old ballads in a rumble against her skin. _But again, dear love, and again, dear love, will you never love me again?_

  


“I’m happy,” she whispers. “I truly am. I would never ask for more.” 

  


“Sometimes more comes to us when we least expect it.” His hand is gentle against her shoulder, tracing a path down until he can tangle his fingers in hers. “It doesn’t make it less painful when it fades away.”

  


“Did you love her?” She asks it in a small voice. They’ve kept a careful distance from any discussion of Robin and Regina, have avoided what is a discussion bound only to bring them both pain, and she wants to take the question back as swiftly as it had come. 

  


But instead she’s silent, waiting, and Robin says, “It was…very soon.”

  


“You say you fell in love with me the moment you saw me. And I wasn’t your soulmate.” 

  


“You are my soulmate in every way that that word matters,” Robin corrects her. “I know you. I love you. Only you.” He sighs, and she knows what’s going to come next. “Regina was the first time I’d ever thought of finding someone else. I was…taken by her, yes. Less so when I’d found out that she was responsible for your death,” he says wryly.

  


“I don’t care about that anymore.” She’s moved past that resentment and fear and found someone else hidden beneath the Evil Queen, and now even that woman has withdrawn from her.

  


“Because you love her.” He squeezes her hand. “Because she loves you.” 

  


She admits it so low that he has to move closer to hear, moving to wrap his arms around her waist. “We could have been sisters.” She’d been freezing to death and Regina had held her tight and kissed her forehead and told her a secret. She’d been adrift and Regina had given her the truth and refused to let her float away. 

  


“We could have been lovers,” Robin says in a murmur, and she pulls away and turns to face him. He’s pensive, hands still against hers but his eyes somewhere distant. “We were second chances for each other. And then we weren’t.

  


“Perhaps Regina has wearied of pinning her hopes on second chances,” he says, and her heart hurts like a revelation.

  


* * *

  


“You’re coming over for dinner,” Emma says when they’re packing up that evening. There had been an incident with a runaway Lost Boy that had gone on too long and they’re late to close the station because of it, worn out and grateful when Emma’s father arrives to take on the night shift with a baby-full carseat in hand.

  


Marian’s fingers halt on the ties to her bag. “Your apartment?” 

  


“You know where.” Emma doesn’t look up. “It’s steak night, which according to Henry means Regina’s going to cook too much food and then–“ She stiffens her back and sighs heavily, putting on an affected tone that sounds nothing like Regina. “Oh, Emma, if you’re here, you’d better stay for dinner. I don’t want you to set your microwave on fire.” She’s all exasperation and more sighs and Marian laughs. “It’s not like Regina doesn’t know that I can cook- I’ve cooked _for_ her- but she thinks she’s Martha Stewart and I’m some stray she picked up off the street. At least I’m getting free steaks out of it. And you are too.” 

  


“Emma.” Her smile has faded as abruptly as the thought of Regina can summon and vanish it. “I’m not wanted there.” 

  


“Yeah? Because I’m pretty sure that I want you there and Henry wants you there, and we both know that Regina does, too.” Emma’s eyes are determined like they’d been at Regina alone, back when they’d all first sat together at Granny’s and talked about her future. “You both need to stop hiding from each other and being miserable about it.” 

  


“ _I’m_ not–“ 

  


“Aren’t you?” Emma closes her last drawer and straightens, tucking her cell phone into her pocket. “I know you were in the woods that night when Regina saw you.” 

  


She frowns. “You saw me too?” She’s losing her touch if she can’t stay hidden in the dark and the woods for a few minutes.

  


Emma shakes her head. “We went home and Regina wouldn’t talk to me. Not even when we… I know the signs of a Marian encounter.” She heads for the door. “You coming?” 

  


It isn’t a question as much as a demand, and Marian would resist just out of contrariness except _a Marian encounter_. Regina is hurting and she’s hurting and they both still matter too much to each other for her to stalk off when summoned. Not when her elusive second family of people she cares too much about are all to be arrayed at the table and she can’t stay away. 

  


Instead she follows after Emma and waits until the other woman is locking up before she ventures, “Did you say you went _home_?” 

  


Emma throws her key ring at her. “Oh, shut up.” 

  


* * *

  


“Marian!” Henry’s eyes are wide when he opens the door. “Hi, Marian!” He looks torn between a hug or a handshake, his arm rising as he moves forward, and she holds out her arms and tugs him into her grasp. He wraps his arms around her just as tightly. “Where have you been?” 

  


“Hard at work.” 

  


“With _Emma_?” He levels a suspicious squint at both of them and Emma looks outraged. 

  


“I work!” 

  


“You have an entire corkboard of best office doodles on the wall. Gramps brought in oil paints.” 

  


“Well, _Gramps_ does the night shift. His job is to watch Baby Neal and sit around and look pretty.” 

  


“As is the only duty of all men.” Marian nods sagely and Henry scowls at both of them. “Except you, of course. You’re going to take over the world.” She winks and he grins again, mollified.

  


Emma musses his hair. “Come on, kid, let’s see if your mom’s up for company for dinner.”

  


“She made extra. Elsa’s already here,” Henry says, heading back toward the stairs and missing the way Marian stills at the name.

  


She can see the girl when she turns to her left, white-blonde braid curled at her shoulders as she sits at the edge of the living room couch uncomfortably. “I don’t-“ she starts, but then Regina is emerging from the kitchen and the words stop on her tongue. 

  


Their hostess’s face is thunderous and her eyes are furious when they settle on her and she cringes under the gaze. Regina blinks at her again, shaking her head, and this was a mistake of epic proportions, an awful miscalculation on both their parts because Regina _does not_ want her here, Regina is angry at the sight of her, and Regina grabs Emma by the arm and nearly forcibly pulls her into the kitchen with a low, “What the hell were you thinking?”

  


And then she continues and Marian leans back against the foyer table for support. “Yes, let’s bring every woman who’s ever assaulted Marian into the house at once,” Regina says, voice scathing. “And invite her for dinner!” 

  


Emma’s returning tone is placating and a little annoyed. “I didn’t know Elsa was going to be here. I thought this would be good for–“ 

  


“You don’t think! You never think!” 

  


Marian sneaks a quick peek into the kitchen. Regina’s hand is still tight on Emma’s wrist and Emma's face is somewhere between offended and contrite. “How was I supposed to know?” 

  


Regina determinedly ignores her. “What am I supposed to do now, tell Elsa to leave? Should I leave?” Now she sounds just as confused as Emma, just as helpless and unguarded. “I can’t send Marian…” She swallows like a gulp, choked for just long enough that Marian peers in again. Now they’re kissing, harsh and fast and angry, Emma backed against the kitchen island while Regina grips her arms and they’re so close that Marian looks away, out of place again.

  


Her eyes settle back on the girl on the couch. Elsa has her arms wrapped around herself and she’s staring to her left, eyes glazed over and teeth biting on her lower lip. She can certainly hear in the silence of the house and Marian purses her lips and looks back into the the kitchen. Emma and Regina have parted, foreheads still pressed together, and Emma’s eyes are closed and her hands are tight against Regina’s hips, thumbs stroking a pattern against her dress. Regina’s open-eyed and solemn in her grasp but her gaze is on Emma’s face as though she can’t fathom pulling away. 

  


It’s even more intimate than the kissing. Marian swallows and walks forward instead, across the foyer to where Elsa is sitting. 

  


“I still have the gloves,” Elsa says when she enters the room. She doesn't turn around, just raises one gloved hand slowly so Marian can see it. “And I’ve gotten my magic under control at last. Regina pronounced me suitable for company earlier today.” 

  


“And this is your celebratory dinner.” Marian moves gingerly to the other side of the couch, schooling her body to not recoil when Elsa turns toward her.

  


Elsa shrugs, her hand lowering to clasp nervously in the other. “I can go if you’d like. I know how important you are to them and I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.” She’s as twitchy as Marian, the two of them caught in the other’s discomfort, and Marian swallows and can’t keep herself from checking on the gloves again. 

  


“It’s…it’s fine,” she murmurs, and she’s surprised that it nearly is. “I’ve been nearly killed dozens of times since I got here. You were only the last.” The last forever, the one that had freed her from the rest, and she can’t bear a grudge against yet another forced killer. She can’t quite free her body of the tension within it, but she manages a smile nonetheless. “Don’t you have a sister here? Does she want to be here tonight, too?” 

  


Elsa’s shoulders lift, up and together. “I didn’t want to bother her.” 

  


It’s a mirror to her own emotions, not long ago, nervous and displaced and not-quite-belonging, and Marian feels a sudden kindredness with this other girl from the past. “Knowing that they’re able to move on without us is the hardest part,” she agrees, and Elsa looks up with wide eyes. She musters up a smile. “But it doesn’t mean she loves you any less. Or that she isn’t ecstatic to have you back with her.”

  


Elsa smiles, soft and tentative. “How do you…how do you find a place in this world? Where everyone else already knows where they belong?” She bites her lip again, staring down at her hands as though they hold an answer she can’t quite see. 

  


Marian reaches over, settling her hands over Elsa’s with stilted movement. It feels steadying, like facing a fear she’s only just begun to consider conquering. “You find people to care about. People who care about you. Then you wait.” She thinks about Robin, about Regina and Mulan and Emma, all focused on giving her a home. All determined to make her fit. 

  


“You make it sound so easy,” Elsa says, and they hear footsteps clipping across the foyer and turn. Emma and Regina are in the doorway beyond the end of the couch, Emma’s fingers still looped around Regina’s wrist and both apparently discomfited by their camaraderie. 

  


Marian struggles to meet Regina’s gaze and Regina’s eyes flicker down instead. “Can we help in the kitchen?” she asks, and only Emma responds.

  


* * *

  


She expects more awkwardness at the table than there is. Regina sits at the back of the round table and Henry and Emma take the seats beside her, leaving Marian beside Henry and Elsa next to her. She sneaks glances at Regina but otherwise doesn’t have to look at her at all, even when she can feel her eyes on her and the conversation drifts to their communal magic lessons. 

  


“We do have some private ones, too,” Emma says, winking at Marian, and Regina follows her eyes to Marian. They swallow almost in tandem, flushing and looking back at their plates at once.

  


“I’d better clear off,” Regina says quickly, hurrying to stand. 

  


And it’s automatic that Marian stands as well, reaching for Henry’s plate before she realizes what she’s doing, and she thinks she must be a dark shade of burgundy by now. Emma’s nodding encouragingly and Henry’s smiling and she can’t sit down now, so she collects Elsa’s plate as well and follows Regina to the kitchen.

  


And then they’re in silence, no one between them to distract them and only the sound of water rushing from the faucet and conversation from the next room as their backdrop. “Thank you for coming,” Regina says formally, taking the plates from Marian and rinsing them off. Dessert tonight is a fruit sorbet, thawing on the counter, and Marian finds the dessert cups in their cabinet and begins scooping it out.

  


“Emma asked me to. I wanted to,” she adds quickly when Regina starts scrubbing a plate with furious strokes. “I thought…I thought it would be good for us to talk.” 

  


“Marian.” Regina murmurs it like a sigh, like she’s already surrendered to something beyond both their control, and Marian’s hackles rise at it. “I don’t know what you think there is here, but whatever happened with Elsa…”

  


“True love?” she cuts in. “How is that negotiable?”

  


Regina shifts just enough for Marian to see her face twist. “It can be one-sided,” she says, and Marian’s heart tightens and tightens and tightens like it might burst if prodded anymore. “We don’t know how love magic works well enough to understand that. Just because my kiss woke you–“ 

  


Marian blinks, and now her heart is pounding a different beat, tense and hopeful with silly, silly needs. “Your kiss didn’t wake me.”

  


She sees Regina turn slowly, lips pressing together as though to hold back a protest, and she hurries on. “When I jumped in front of you…that’s when I started to thaw. I was already saved when you kissed my forehead.”

  


Regina’s mouth opens, then closes, and she’s flustered, like she doesn’t know how to respond to that at all. Marian reddens but doesn’t look away. “Oh.”

  


“Oh,” Marian agrees.

  


Regina nods. “I’m glad you were able to save yourself,” she says carefully. 

  


It’s the most thoughtful thing anyone has said to her since they’d escaped Elsa and she staggers in place at it, at the understanding and pride in Regina’s eyes. Regina had been just as much a prisoner to fate as she had, though her position had been less dire, and of course only Regina would comprehend the significance of her getting a chance to fight back at last. “I’m glad you helped me,” she offers back, and there’s a new light in Regina’s eyes like she hasn’t seen before. 

  


It dims a moment later and Regina turns back to the dishes. “You don’t owe me…there’s no need for you to feel that way.” 

  


“Grateful?”

  


“Indebted,” Regina sets out a tray and moves the glass cups onto it. “You don’t need to be here.” Marian stills, hands pressed against the container of sorbet. She doesn’t speak, and Regina waits and waits and then finally says, “I understand…you don’t need to come here just to satisfy Emma.” 

  


Her heart is thrumming again, an angry buzz like hornets struggling to break free, and she forces it silent, forces herself not to snap right then and give up. There’s a part of her that still longs to take the sorbet and walk to the table, counting this as a victory, but her head is pounding and this is _unfair_ , this is drowning in a deluge where everything she says is twisted into something else. Where Regina has just admitted feeling more than obligation and would turn her aside a moment later.

  


She lets the sorbet go and turns away and demands, “Why is it so difficult for you to believe that I care about you?”

  


Regina freezes halfway through lifting the tray. Marian glares. Regina’s jaw tightens. 

  


She leaves the kitchen and Marian remains standing at the counter, fingers squeezing the cardboard container of sorbet until it folds inward under her grasp.

  


* * *

  


“Tell me a story, Mama,” Roland mumbles, eyes already half-closed. He’s curled up in his little bed, a stuffed monkey half his size- _a replacement,_ Robin had said, and had only shuddered when she’d asked for details- in his arms.

  


She tucks the blanket up to his chin and he smiles sleepily. “What do you want to hear about?” He doesn’t answer, and she rests her hand on his back as she speaks, rubbing smooth circles into his thin pajama top. “How about one about a Lady and a Princess?” He bobs his head. “There was once a little girl who was a Lady, but she was all alone. She spent a lot of time in a palace where she didn’t have any friends and her sisters were all too little to play with.

  


“Then, one day, a Princess came to the palace.” Roland shifts, curling closer to her, and she draws her legs up under her so she’s fully on his bed. “She was a lonely girl, too, and there were some other boys and girls who were mean to her.” Roland’s brow furrows. “But she was pretty and kind and very brave, and the Lady wanted to know her and be just like her. They played together for days and the Lady thought that she might have found a sister, someone else in the world she loved.

  


“But the Princess had a dark mother, spiteful and bitter, and when she saw the Princess with the Lady, she ordered the Princess to stay far, far away from the Lady. You see, the Princess’s mother wanted her to be friends with the other princes and princesses, not some little Lady girl.” Roland’s eyes are wide and concerned and she hastens to add, “But the Princess didn’t listen and they became friends anyway, the Lady and the Princess. And when bad things happened to the Princess, the Lady was there for her and the Princess wasn’t so alone. And they were happy together and darkness never touched either of their hearts.” 

  


“That’s a good story,” Roland says, snuggling into his blanket. 

  


She keeps smiling until her lips hurt as acutely as her heart. “It’s just a fairytale, Roland. Goodnight.” She brushes a kiss to his cheek. “I love you.” 

  


“Love you, Mama,” he mumbles, his eyes drifting closed, and she feels a sob bubbling up in her throat at the declaration, offered so freely from a child. From _her_ child, and she kisses him again before she rises to leave.

  


She makes her way out of the camp, nodding to a few of the Men to keep an eye on Roland. She doesn’t go to Zelena’s house anymore, not after last time, not after Regina and her damned willfulness and this pain that won’t fade when she thinks of her.

  


They haven’t spoken since that evening at Regina’s house and she’s drifting, haunted by shapes in the woods and figures on the street. She sees Regina everywhere and hurts all the more for it, spots her in the distance and hears her voice when she’s alone and…

  


…And there it is again, too pronounced to be an illusion. She frowns, slipping behind a gap in the trees to peer into a clearing. There’s a fallen log at the center of it, long and high, and there’s Regina, seated on one side. On the other, just a few feet away and facing the other direction, is Robin.

  


Her stomach drops before she sees the careful distance between them, the way they sit apart as they speak, and then she doesn’t know which one of them she envies most. “Elsa believes a woman may be after her, the reason she was sealed into that urn in the first place. We’ll need to keep our eyes open.” Regina’s voice is clipped and businesslike and she doesn’t look at Robin.

  


He’s watching her, though, brow furrowed and eyes compassionate, and he says, “I believe I owe you an apology.”

  


“You don’t need to apologize for anything.” Regina rubs at her temples, elbows sinking onto her lap.

  


“I had said that I accepted your past–“ 

  


Regina sighs. “We didn’t know then that I’d murdered your wife. I would have hated me, too.”

  


“Still. You aren’t that woman any longer.” Robin is earnest, pressing through Regina’s flippancy without frustration, and Marian bites her lip and wishes she could be so persistent without getting angry. “I am sorry to have left you alone again.” 

  


There’s a ghost of a smile playing at Regina’s lips, curling her lips and uncurling them again. “I wasn’t alone.” She inhales slowly, as though taking in the musk of the woods. “When I lost Daniel, I had no one. No one who loved me as…as I wanted to be loved then. But now…” She breathes out. “I have Henry. And Emma. And her…” She scowls to herself. “Don’t make me say it.”

  


He grins. “And David and Snow.” A beat. “And my wife.” 

  


Regina glares into the woods. “Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t _have_ Marian. Marian thinks…Marian has no reason to be around me anymore. There’s no need to pretend it’s more than it is.” 

  


“It was enough to save her life,” Robin says, and Marian sinks down to the ground, listening but unable to watch anymore. “What are you so afraid of?”

  


“I’m not afraid of anything.” Regina sounds cranky, as though she’s had this conversation before. “Marian can rewrite our history however she’d like, but maybe it’s time you asked _her_ that. Because short of Emma dragging her to my house, I don’t see her any more willing to be around me now than I am her.” 

  


Which is patently unfair. Regina is the one who makes the rules there, who had pushed her aside in the first place and rejected her, and she’s the injured party. Regina had left her alone in her kitchen with too many questions and a crushed container of sorbet. And she hadn’t followed, because she isn’t Emma. Because she isn’t Robin. Because she can push but not when she’s so clearly _unwanted_ , even despite true love. When she is only a burden again to someone she cares too much about to press harder.

  


“You’re both afraid,” Robin retorts. “But someone’s going to have to break through that cycle, for both your sakes. And that burden rests on you, not her. She’s only waiting for you.” 

  


Regina’s face falls into her hands and she whispers, so low that Marian has to strain and rise again to hear, “I don’t know how to do this, Robin. I don’t know how to have people. I nearly…I nearly scared Emma off before I even had her. And I lost Henry so many times that I can’t imagine…all these _people_.”

  


“And you’re willing to lose Marian because you can’t imagine that she could love you?” Regina flinches. Robin shifts, moving close enough to put a hand on Regina’s shoulder. “No one is going to stop you from being happy, Regina. No one but yourself.”

  


“Why do you care?”

  


“I care about you,” he says simply. “And I love Marian. I will do anything in my power to make her happy- and to give you that, too.”

  


She offers him a long stare. “If you suggest double-dating, I’m never speaking to you again.” 

  


He considers. “Actually, that would–“

  


“Never again,” she warns him, rising to her feet. But she’s smiling at him, a real smile that lights up her face and makes Marian long, long, like she has no business longing, and she vanishes in a cloud of purple smoke a moment later.

  


Marian emerges from concealment and Robin’s already facing her, arms out to wrap her into his embrace when she stumbles to him.

  


* * *

  


It takes two days for Regina to see her again, and by then Marian's worked herself up into such a tizzy of self-righteous resentment that she opens the door to the station and is momentarily stymied. “Regina.”

  


“I…” she lifts her hands to display the glass pan propped up in them. There’s a smile on her face that looks like it’s been pasted there, and her eyes are unsure. “I brought lasagna. I thought we could all do lunch.” 

  


Emma leans back against her chair. “She only brings food when she’s anxious about something.” She’s grinning easily, but there’s warmth and comfort on her face and it’s the only reason Marian steps back to allow a startled Regina to walk past her.

  


“Emma!” 

  


“What? It’s true.” Emma winks at Marian and Marian can feel herself relax more, can feel the tension in the room dropping down to manageable levels. “I’m not as much of an idiot as you think.” 

  


Regina places the lasagna on Emma’s desk, cutting out three precise pieces onto plates. “I don’t think you’re an idiot, I think you’re wonderful. Now eat your lasagna.” 

  


Emma is momentarily stunned and Marian’s lips curve up into a smile. There’s something reassuring about them even now, about the affection and bickering that still feels like home. And when their hands brush against each other as Regina sets out the lasagna and they share tentative smiles, she looks down, embarrassed at her own happiness for their happiness.

  


When it comes down to it, that’s all she’s wanted for both of them, even if she can’t have what she craves from one of them. “Thank you,” she murmurs, taking her plate.

  


Regina nods shortly. “I…I’ve been unfair. With you.” Emma’s fingers shift to twine around hers. “I’ve been overwhelmed with both love and loss lately, and I think I was afraid that if I accepted you, too, I’d lose…I didn’t want to lose you.”

  


Marian swallows hard. “So you’d rather not have me at all?” 

  


“I had a sister. I had…” She sighs and glances at both of them with wary eyes and Emma says, “You had Robin.” 

  


“Yes.” Regina’s fingers tighten where they’re latched on to Emma’s. “I’m…” 

  


And Marian remembers Robin’s words, late one night when nothing had seemed right. “You’re tired of second chances,” she says blankly. She turns away, staring into her lasagna and biting hard on the inside of her cheek to keep from an outburst. Any outburst, angry or emotional or devastated, all that Regina evokes from her that she doesn’t deserve. That she shouldn’t get from–

  


“No. Stop it. Stop giving up.” A delicate, firm hand catches her chin and raises it, the same way she’s seen Regina do to Henry a dozen times so they can speak face-to-face. “Do you have any idea how much you terrify me?” Regina breathes.

  


She shakes her head. “I don’t want to terrify you. I just want…”

  


“I do love you,” Regina murmurs, so quietly that Marian’s eyes go wide and she has to run the words through her mind again before before she’s sure of what she’d heard. “I want nothing more than for you to be my family. But I hurt you very much and I don’t want you to wake up one day and know that and leave me, too.”

  


A protest bubbles up in her throat, defiant and challenging, but the words don’t feel _right_ , like a promise that’s an easy way out and a useless bandage on the past. So she clears her throat and says, “That’s a risk you’re going to have to take. If I’m worth it.” 

  


“You’re worth everything.” Regina’s eyes gleam and are very, very soft, and Marian moves forward and reaches out to hold her. Regina hugs like Henry, tight and uncompromising in her affection, and neither of them let go for a long, long time.

  


* * *

  


On Sunday, she and Mulan let Roland run down the sidewalk of Mifflin Street until he shouts out a delighted, “Regina!” and Regina pokes her head up from behind a hedge. 

  


“Roland? Marian, Mulan.” There’s a tentative smile on her face, as though she’s still waiting for it to be wiped off her face, and Marian crouches down beside her and takes the clippers she’d been using to trim her bushes. “What brings you here?” 

  


“Gardening,” Mulan offers, joining them at the hedge.

  


Roland bobs his head in agreement. “Can I dig holes again?” 

  


Regina looks gratified and a little worried, but they all get an assignment and they work with comfortable conversation, making small talk about work and the boys and their respective relationships.  

  


“Emma still sneaks out most mornings,” Regina says, rolling her eyes. “She’s convinced that her parents don’t know about us.” 

  


Marian snickers. “You’ve been going on dates at Granny’s twice a week.” 

  


Mulan nods. “Kissing in the middle of Town Hall.” 

  


“In the middle of the sheriff’s station. When David is _there_.” 

  


“Holding hands down Main Street.” There’s laughter in Mulan’s eyes and Regina narrows her own.

  


“I’ve seen you looking friendly with…Rapunzel, is it? down Main Street, too,” she retorts, and Marian’s head pops up. 

  


“Rapunzel?” 

  


She’s gratified when Mulan ducks her head and returns to the hedges, refusing to look at either of them. “I’ve been working with Rapunzel since the missing year. She’s asked me to teach her self-defense and martial arts so she can better protect herself and hers. Nothing more.” 

  


“Nothing more?” Marian echoes, tilting her head to meet Mulan’s eyes. Mulan gives her a dark look.

  


“Actually, Elsa’s been talking about the same,” Regina says thoughtfully. “She feels defenseless when her abilities are so constrained to just ice, and she’s been looking for someone to teach her to fight. Emma offered, but Emma has her own magic to work on.” Her brow wrinkles. “Frederick from the local gym has been asking about taking on a teacher for an advanced self-defense class, too. I can have Emma put in a good word for you, if you’d like.” 

  


“I would like that,” Mulan says. She looks taken aback by the offer, caught between gratitude and confusion, and Marian grins to herself and helps Roland with his pail and shovel as they continue.

  


* * *

  


They’re trying. 

  


Regina takes her lunch break at the station every day and Robin and Roland have come with her for dinner twice now, and there are always hugs, there’s always emotion and this guardedness that still suffuses their motions. Henry sits with Marian as they shuffle through Emma’s paperwork and Regina okays archery lessons from her that outrage his grandmother (which Marian suspects might have been Regina’s goal in the first place). The house is loud and full of life and it feels just as much like home as the cabin in the woods.

  


And sometimes it’s quiet and it’s just the two of them, learning to cook or shopping online or exchanging stories of royal idiocy, and Marian savors every moment. Even as a child, she’d longed for nothing more than a big sister, a protector and a caretaker who would invest the kind of love and nurturing in her as she had her younger sisters. And now there’s Regina, who is everything and nothing like she’d dreamed of and curt and mocking as quickly as she is fierce and gentle. And somehow she’s real all the more for it.

  


“You were right. This world isn’t that bad,” Elsa tells her one evening when they’re in the yard, watching Roland and Henry and Emma tackling Anna’s husband’s pet reindeer. Roland is hanging onto its antlers for dear life and Regina keeps a watchful eye on them, hand already alive with magic to cushion his inevitable fall. “And it helps to have family looking out for you.” 

  


“Very much,” she agrees, eyes on Regina, and Regina’s cheeks take on a tint like copper at the edges. 

  


And they inch forward every day, step after step, living in a world where nothing is predetermined and they make their own future.

  


* * *

  


On her three-month anniversary of arriving in the future, she takes Roland to the stables at the edge of town. He rides his little pony and she’s feeling bold enough to take out one of the rougher steeds in the end stalls, and they amble together across the meadow when they see the two figures astride their own horses in the distance.

  


“My mother used to tell me I rode like a man,” Regina says, trotting closer and nodding at their mutual lack of saddle. She laughs wryly. “She’d probably have plenty more to say about my relationship with Emma.”

  


“It’s a good thing she isn’t here, then.” Marian taps the hindquarters of Roland’s pony and it walks forward, joining Henry as the two women linger behind. “Your mother was terrifying.” 

  


“Hm.” Regina’s fingers twitch against her horse’s mane. “Yet I can’t help but wonder if we’d still be here if she hadn’t kept us apart when I was fifteen.” She rubs her knuckles along her steed's neck. “Are you happy?” 

  


It isn’t the first time someone’s skirted around that question. Robin hints at it nearly every night and only sometimes can she respond, and Emma has said it offhand, glancing at her as though waiting for confirmation. But Regina turns to her and waits for a response, demanding, always demanding, never settling for anything less. It had been brutal on the Evil Queen, but on Regina, it’s a requirement only for her to be truthful with herself. 

  


And she’d been happy before she’d been captured, glad with her new family and the future stretching ahead of her, but now… Now she feels surrounded in a way she hadn’t been since she was a child, by family and friends and the support of all the people around her. Now she has a future that seems stable and enduring, with opportunities looming beyond any in the Enchanted Forest. Now she has Regina and her family and true love all around them, flickering like new hope after the old has faded. “I am,” she answers. “Are you?” And she thinks she knows the answer already. 

  


There’s still regret in Regina’s eyes when she gazes at her, guilt and memories of so many victims contained within her feelings for Marian, and they both know. _I thought I could reject the past,_  Regina had murmured one afternoon. _That I could move forward and be what I wanted to be. And then you were here._ And she doesn’t know what she represents to Regina now, love or hope or remorse or all three combined, but she trusts Regina to take care of her now, as she’s been doing since Marian had arrived in her town. 

  


Regina doesn’t answer, but she looks ahead to where their sons are riding, Henry guiding Roland along like a little brother of his own, and there’s a calmness in the air as the sun shines down on them and the grass is green and bright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted one last chapter to let her adjust, for life to move on now that she- and Regina- are free to live their lives as they should. I hope I did it some justice. 
> 
> Thanks to all of you for reading and especially to those of you who commented. I didn't expect this fic to get much feedback and I'm delighted that many of you have come to care about Marian as much as I have. This has been an unexpected treat to write. :)
> 
> Replies will be up as soon as I have a free moment! I'm going to take a few days before I return to Sore Must Be The Storm, lol.


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